April 22, 2010 - Nanny Kris

Nanny Kris

Sarah, it's occurred to me that I mention my friend and co-worker Kris all the time, but you don't know her story. Do you remember her from 4H several years ago? She has no children, but she came to the Saturday visit/meetings as a helper before the administration changed the policy to disallow 4h helpers. You and Carrie called her "Nanny Kris", and Carrie offered to let her live in their basement when she paroles because the kids adore her. Kris, who's a big kid herself, always jumped down on the floor and played like one of them.

Kris is in her late 20's, gorgeous, tall, and thin, with waist length straight dark blonde hair— usually pulled back in a ponytail. She's got a Nordic surfer girl physicality, if there could be such a creature. Lithe but strong. In her free life she worked for a veterinarian's assistant, which was perfect for a gal who adores all animals and isn't afraid to get messy. She also comes from a dysfunctional broken home with a sweet mother and dear father who didn't seem to know what to do with a daughter like Kris—plagued with OCD, ADHD and every other initialed psychological issue. Kristin has more issues than a magazine stand.

I was not there, of course, but I believe that Kris was cohabitating with her boyfriend, and the relationship was toxic, abusive. Her head-shaved bully of a boyfriend, a steroid-enhanced body builder, displayed a quick and foul temper. Violent. And I'm sure that stubborn, hardheaded Kris didn't make matters any better by refusing to bend to his every whim.

Yes, Kris should have moved on, hidden away, changed her whole life to stay away from him, but hindsight is 20/20. (Or 180 like I heard on the sidewalk recently. "Hindsight is 180, ya know, Boo.") And we must remember that she thought she loved him and could save him from himself. (If I had a nickel for every deluded woman who thinks that very lie this very day, I could buy this prison and kick everyone out.) Kris was also very young, barely out of her teens, which equals inexperienced. Sometimes it takes some years and mileage on our tachometer before we realize that a bad apple is just a bad apple.

During a domestic dispute that escalated into an argument that turned into a fight that grew into a beating, Kris grabbed what we call back home "an equalizer" (a Louisville Slugger) and slammed the aggressive and scary body builder beau in the head with such force that not only did she stop the beating, he unfortunately died. The story could have gone the other way. He could easily have won the fight, and I would know nothing of Kristin.

Because Kris didn't have a hospital history of abuse with photos and corroborating testimony and money for expert legal representation, her lawyer suggested that she take a deal. If she held out for a trial, the jury could easily decide to give her Life with No Parole. After rotting in the infamous Hellhole called the St. Louis Work House for two torturous years, she copped a plea for 25 years, second degree murder, with a mandatory minimum of 85% before she's eligible for parole. To do the math for you, she must serve 21 years and three months before she can even be considered for parole.

She'll serve over two decades in prison because she survived. But I have got to hand it to Kris, who has served around nine long years so far. She looks for the humor in most any situation. No one is sillier than my friend—or as quick witted. She stays busy with meaningful endeavors and is much loved by her family and admired by inmates and staff alike. In December she brilliantly played the athletic Scarecrow in our production of "The Wizard of Oz". Her parents came to the visiting room show, separately, of course. They were the biggest ducks in the puddle and enjoyed their daughter's evident preparation and characterization so much that it was infectious. Her daddy laughed so big that he became part of the show! I had trouble staying in character as the disgruntled Wicked Witch of the West.

Also Kris is not one of these prisoners who exhibits no remorse for the horror of taking a life. This burden and the cloud of guilt will forever hang over her head. But she's worked to the point where she refuses to let the mistakes of the past kill her, too.

I pray that the 85% mandatory minimum law that was passed in 1994 will be rescinded. It's not only glutting the expensive prison system, but it's not a fair and just law for victims who survived like Kristin—who deserve a chance at a good life outside these razor wire fences before she's too old to find a good life.

When I was first locked up in 1986, prisoners who acted halfway decently served around 10-12 years on a life sentence—now it's near 30. The ones serving a number of years, like 25, served one-third of the years. I knew a young girl, exactly Jane's age (16 when we met with the very same birthday) who served 8.5 years on her 25 for second degree murder. She had been sitting unawares in the car while her boyfriend killed former employers. Sherry knew nothing of the murders until he jumped back in the driver's seat, sped off, and bragged to her of what he'd done. He threatened her life if she didn't keep her mouth shut. She believed him—after all, he'd just killed a family. Of course the truth eventually came out (he couldn't help but boast), and naïve teeny-bopper Sherry was considered an accessory after the fact.

If this same case had happened after August 28, 1994, Sherry would still be locked up and serving the same lengthy amount of time as Kris. Back in the 80's we thought that 8.5 years was too much time for poor Sherry to have to serve. Boy, have times changed. Vengeance is no longer mine, sayeth the Lord.

April 14, 2010 - Bananas

We had bananas for breakfast!!! That's a big thing in my world. I keep track of bananas. The fruit truck delivers on Tuesdays (unless there's yet another Monday state holiday), so usually we get one banana each at breakfast on Wednesdays. That's the only chance at a banana we get each week. (The remaining bananas are whisked away to the PDR for staff.)

And the reason bananas are served only at the one breakfast is to save money. Many fewer inmates rise and shine at 5:30 to stumble to the chow hall for grits and toast, but there are those of us who never miss breakfast because of the milk. (Milk is only served at breakfast, and as a small-boned Caucasian woman, I must protect my bone density at all cost.) This morning I traded my white rice for a banana, so I had TWO WHOLE BANANAS! I was in banana hog heaven!

Fresh fruit is a big deal to me every day. I peruse the weekly menu on the bulletin board with a hawk eye. Prison fruit is apples, oranges, an occasional pear in season, and every few months a grapefruit half. I'm always amazed at the fact that the majority of prisoners in my prison do not appreciate fresh fruit. Most much prefer their fruit canned and swimming in heavy syrup to a crisp apple.

Part of the problem is teeth. Good strong teeth, the kind needed for apple munching, are rare. I can't tell you how many times I've heard this comment: "I'd sure like to eat that apple, but I'm afraid it'll break off the teeth I have left. Miss Patty, do you want this?" Bet your booties, I do! Yum! (As long as my teeth hold out….) The other factor is laziness. "I'll eat my orange if you peel it for me." What? Peel your own damn orange, for crying out loud!

Also most prisoners would rather have a cupcake for dessert than a piece of fresh fruit—even if the dry state-made cupcakes leave much to be desired. If the menu lists "gelatin or fruit", you can bet your bottom dollar that it will be jello or canned apples, canned peaches, canned pears, or canned crushed pineapple. Those four are the canned fruit choices. The jello can be plain or the cooks can add the canned fruit. The cooks are also creative and add ingredients like shredded cabbage to green jello. I just haven't gotten used to it. Give me a piece of relatively fresh recognizable fruit that actually saw it's mother tree in the not too distant past.

But today is a good day. I got to eat not one but two bananas for breakfast! Yippee! I can't wait until next Wednesday morning.

March 29, 2010

 

My cellmate Angie (43) moved out of our room this morning to the work release dorm, and I'll miss her terribly. Good Catholic Angie, from the Bootheel, wife and mother of 3 young boys, embezzled from the car dealership for which she worked. I've never in my too-long incarceration seen an inmate suffer so for her sins. Her guilt for shattering the trust of her family and employers is immense. Even so she possesses a dry sense of intellectual humor and a sweetness that I just adore. This morning as she packed to leave, I gave her the special candy Easter egg that I'd bought for her. I didn't mean to open the floodgates, but that offering was the final straw. She wept in my arms for all the reasons women weep. Angie has just over a year to serve before she can run home into the waiting arms of her loyal husband and rambunctious sons. I have no doubt that she'll rebuild a great life with them.

The MO Senate has been all over the TV news trying to cut the state budget. Hello! You can let me go and save a bundle! In fact, I can give them a list.
 

At theatre class yesterday afternoon, a twit who has been here only a matter of months and just chatters inanely all the time whined to no one in particular, "I was supposed to leave July 5^th—but now it's July 6^th—a whole 24 hours more!" Big dramatic sigh. I caught the eyes of a young black life-with-no-parole gal across the table, so I turned to the twit and schooled her, "You might watch what you say in here since you're at a table with lifers." Each word I pronounced distinctly and slowly to allow the message to sink in. I turned back to Lawanda, who smiled at me with her big brown eyes. I have no problem informing short-timer twits of the facts of life.

Yesterday about 6 gals were cuffed and taken to the hole for stealing out of the canteen. This was organized crime. The canteen workers was shoving the loot out of the back and the warehouse workers were in charge of transporting and distributing—under the unblinking eyes of dozens of security cameras. But honestly the canteen and warehouse supervisors are to blame. They hired known thieves. If you play with snakes and get bit, whose fault is it? I guess the mob had quite a hussle going on and was selling Kools for $2! Free enterprise, the prison way.

March 26, 2010 - Ruby

Ya know, ya think that after you've been locked up for 24 years you wouldn't see or hear anything especially new. Every once in a while, I'm proven wrong in that theory. Kristin came to work this morning with a tale that shocked even me. Saturday at 10pm when count cleared, Kris descended the stairs, entered the ph one room and called her mother. The phone room is separated from the dayroom by a windowed wall with one windowed door. The rotunda officers have a clear view of this room, as you can imagine.

As mother and daughter chatted, Ruby waltzed in, sat in the other chair facing Kris (there are two phones about 6 inches apart on the wall in the phone room), punched out the code to make a call, and as the phone rang on the other end, Ruby slunk down, pulled out her battery-powered electric razor and, over the buzz of the appliance, mouthed to Kris, "I'm going to masturbate." (Got your attention, didn't I.)

Ruby had called her lover, Boo, who had just paroled a week or so ago. Can you picture this? Kris, who's sitting only a few inches from Ruby, is attempting to act normal and talk to her mother as if this peculiar show were not happening. By this time, Ruby is making all sorts of moans and howls while grinding this buzzing prison vibrator into her crotch—making a big verbal show for Boo on the end of the line. Officers are milling around the rotunda. Other inmates are in the dayroom playing cards and visiting.

Kris gives up and gives some bogus excuse to her mother as to why she needs to say goodbye right now. No one I know can keep this kind of information to herself, so as she's telling a group of card-playing friends, she sees this tiny older black lady who resembles a Ninja turtle enter the phone room, turn on her heel, and immediately emerge with the same weirded-out look on her face that Kris must have worn.

Since you don't know Ruby, let me attempt to describe her. She's not young, but not old, black, tall and wiry, with semi-unkept braids. She's mentally ill, and everyone knows it except Ruby. No one in the history of the world has ever had a sane conversation with her. When I see Ruby staring at me with those wild buggy eyes, I hasten for an exit. She usually asks me some legal question that F. Lee Bailey (I'm sure his name dates me tremendously) could never have answered or complains to me about some prison rule that no one will ever change because it doesn't exist. I enjoy hearing about her off-the-wall exploits, but I never want to be involved with them. Right before Boo paroled, the pair attended aerobic classes just to be together. I tried my best to ignore them then.

Janiece did not do a good job of ignoring them during one class in which we were tag-teaming teachers. Ruby kept wandering around not working out, as usual, but when I had the mic leading step aerobics, Ruby sat down on the bleachers, which is a no-no during aerobics. Janiece went straight for her and out of the corner of my eye, I first thought that Janiece had struck her because Ruby fell back and rolled around wailing on the foot area between the seats of the bleachers. In reality, Ruby had seen Janiece coming for her and hurled herself backward acting like she was hurt. Janiece was mad as a wet hen.

To finish this Ruby story, about 30 minutes after Kris gave up on her call; Ruby left the phone, went straight to the bathroom to was her hands, and then wandered around the dayroom bothering people as if nothing strange had happened. Kris is still shaking her head in disbelief.

March 18, 2010

 

Today we're in deep fog which is not good on a prison camp. We can only move if escorted. Security, ya know. But the fog is pretty to me. And I smell spring in the air.

 

My robin is back. He perches on the one puny over-peed-on little oak tree in the dog pen and sings to me when I walk to breakfast at 5:30. He just showed up a week or so ago and sings to me all spring and into the summer until it gets too hot. He's proud of his red breast and puffs it out as he turns his beak up to the sky and belts out my favorite spring song. Between verses, he cocks his head over to see if I'm watching. I always smile at my Rockin Robin and call, "I see you!" Spectators think I'm nuts, until I advise them that God sent him to remind us that everything is going to be OK. Can't argue with that.

 

My stupid little cellmate who chatters all the time and is giving up her 8^th baby for adoption is moving out of our room this morning. YEAH! She's OK, just a pest. Constantly asking how to spell the simplest words, writing sex to male inmates, and ignoring her children because she's a brainless drug addict child herself. We are happy that we will now be able to think and study in the room!

 

So now we have four of us in the room. Stacy, (39) half Mexican, half middle-eastern, is at my feet. Amy, (43) a nice white Catholic embezzler from the bootheel, is across from me. Sara, (36) black gal with an assault and a 3^rd grade mentality who calls me mom is catty-corner. I should tell you about Stacy. That's a story.

 

Stacy's serving 30 years with an 85% mandatory minimum for first degree assault. She, a successful hairdresser and graphic artist, and her handsome husband were excitedly expecting their first child. They had a name picked out, the nursery in their gorgeous country home decorated, and Christmas gifts for the baby under the tree. Everything was joyously going as scheduled until the delivery. The baby was stillborn. Their precious daughter never drew a breath.

 

It's not uncommon for new mothers to have post-partum depression and Stacy had battled depression all her adult life anyway, but the devastating loss of this child, whom she had nurtured for nine months, already loved, and ached to have and to hold kicked her over the emotional edge.

 

Stacy remembers none of what occurred next, but I've heard that she walked out of the hospital in her gown, ended up at a house which advertized their new baby with balloons on the porch and a big sign, "Welcome Home Our Baby Girl!" When the mother of the house opened the door to the knock, Stacy burst in, somehow cut the mother's throat superficially with a knife from the mom's home, and stole the tiny infant. I can only imagine the terror of that event for that young mother.

 

I think that Stacy's sister called the police when she realized that this was not Stacy's baby. The story got big news coverage in St. Louis. "Crazed Mexican breaks into private home, cuts throat of new mother and steals newborn baby." Of course the prosecutor wangled to make sure they didn't get a female judge, she was portrayed as a tormenting monster, and Stacy was handed the maximum sentence for assault. She's required to serve 25.5 years on this 30 year sentence, and I understand that punishment is necessary—but is there no compassion for this form of mental illness? We have dozens of women in here for murder who are serving half that time.

 

Her husband cut all ties to her because he couldn't handle the emotional strain of visiting her in prison and not knowing how long she would be here. She's not in any contact with him, although she still loves him and showed me photos of them cuddling during happy times. She and her sister were pregnant at the same time, so when I saw her 6 year old nephew recently in the visiting room, I thought of Stacy's baby. I'm sure Stacy does.

 

Like I mentioned, Martha is busy gathering the paperwork to give her eighth child away to adoptive parents. Only 26 she has already lost the other seven to the state because of her irresponsible druggie lifestyle. This baby is the first one she wasn't "using" while pregnant—only because she was locked up for most of the pregnancy. Stacy rarely discusses anyone's business, but the casual way that Martha is handing over her beautiful blonde baby girl has caused Stacy to share a bit of how much she misses her own daughter and how her life would be different if her baby had survived.

 

Stacy has lived in my room since December of 08, nearly 15 months, but not until recently has she opened up. I was fearful that her depression had swallowed her whole. In the past few months, she started exercising with me faithfully every day and is not only losing weight, she is energized. She's chatting about her life and the reason she's here. She's laughing and joking and sleeping much less. Recently she let the cosmo students cut her extremely long thick black stringy hair into a stylish shoulder-length swing, and I can't tell you how thrilled I am that this pretty young woman is coming to life.

 

Everyone in here is a broken sparrow, some more injured than others. My hope for us all is that we can all regain our strength and fly. Stacy is on her way and will soar again. I see it coming.

March 4, 2010

 

I have theatre class today, so this letter is nearly done. No time. I run too much on Thursdays.

 

OH MY GOD!!! We had "Food Inc" as our state movie yesterday. Every human being needs to see it! No wonder I feel poisoned most of the time. And Linda pointed out that our food is processed in JC, put in plastic bags, frozen, and shipped to prisons around the state. To serve the gruel, they boil the water to 400 degrees and plop the bags in the pot. The plastic MUST leech out into our foods and that's' why we get so sick. She has Crohn's Disease and no one in her family has ever had it.

 

My druggie cellmate Martha (26), who has lost 7 children to the state for foolishness, is adopting out her 5 month old baby, #8 and counting. I think it's for the best, but the other cellmates disagree. I advised Martha to get "fixed" ASAP! The state doesn't need druggie babies in droves with no one to care for them. She's such a dummy! I mean it. I've never known anyone so stupid—but sweet!

January 21, 2010

 

Yesterday one of my cellmates was transferred to Chillicothe. Before she left, she stole a pack of cigs and a lighter from Melanie, my Korean friend. This Jessie is a mess. Just turned 21 and is already labeled as "prior persistent" on her face sheet, which means she must do no less than 60% of her sentence. This is not her first time here. She's not stupid—just spoiled and headstrong. From Springfield, but her mother won't allow her to parole to her. Now, that's pretty bad when your own momma doesn't want you. (By the way, she's here for forging checks she's stolen, running credit cards, and marijuana possession.)

 

Got a new cellmate today. Mandy is very young, blonde, short, and odd. She was raised in a car by a daddy who was on the run and a drug addict. She has a 5 month old baby in the care of the Mennonites. She's kind of annoying. Talks too much, is too friendly, has nothing except rotten meth mouth, and is in her Bible all the time looking for something. Patience, Grasshopper. The good thing is that she's supposed to go to drug treatment—and is overdue to go. So any day…

 

In the bathroom, a gal up the hall told me that she had started her period and looked glum. I cheerily noted, "Well, at least you're not pregnant!" She observed, "If I was, the father would have to be my battery-operated razor!" That's funny to me.