Redemption (22 page)

A Different Kind of Gumbo

chulte told me he’d let Christy go if I did what he said. I had parroted back his every word over and over—even on tape. But Christy was still in custody. She was sent to juvenile detention. I couldn’t do anything else to help her. It was a devastating feeling. After everything I had done, I still had no control.

I was formally arrested. I had to stand in front of a blue background and hold up a black sign that said St. Louis County Interrogation plus my name and a bunch of numbers. I barely remember the camera flashing or the people shoving me from room to room inside police headquarters.

I was delivered to Clayton Jail at 11 or 12 p.m. on July 5. They fingerprinted me and took me upstairs to a dark, solitary cell with just a bed and a toilet. I got to my cell around 2 a.m. I had been awake—mostly hysterical—for well over twenty-four hours. I fell onto the plastic mattress on top of a hard metal bunk. They didn’t even make the beds at Clayton Jail—there were no sheets. Inmates stayed for only short periods of time while they waited to post bond or be arraigned.

I had never been so exhausted in my life. But I still had the energy to be a little scared. I didn’t have the full realization that my dad was gone. I didn’t fully believe that he wouldn’t show up and rape me in the night. But then a guard locked my door and walked away. When I heard the key click, something clicked in my head and my heart.

I was safe.

From him.

I had to be locked up to finally be free.

I fell asleep. I had two hours of the most restorative, most complete rest I’d ever had in my entire life.

The truth was on record.

I had told a police officer that I had been abused. I had told a police officer that I had killed my father. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have to hide. My reality was no longer a dirty secret; it was no longer a tangled web of lies.

Officers woke me up at 7 a.m. for my arraignment.

I went before a judge to hear the charges against me. I was charged with murder in the first degree and armed criminal action. The bail was set at $750,000. I was expected to plead guilty or not guilty.

I hoped for a miracle. I hoped there was some way I could claim I had acted out of self-defense. I knew it was naïve, but I hoped that I could prove to someone that if I hadn’t killed him, my sister or I would have eventually been killed.

I pleaded not guilty.

The gavel went down. I still had not seen or heard from a lawyer.

I was transferred to St. Louis County Jail. At the time, the facility was located in a western St. Louis neighborhood called Gumbo Flats (now Chesterfield Valley). My jail was known as Gumbo. All the criminals—and now I was one of them—were processed through Gumbo or Workhouse. Workhouse was the nickname for the city jail.

I had a lot to learn—and fast. Jail was a huge holding tank—up to forty criminals were housed in open units fenced in by hard chicken wire. They weren’t private, but we had sectioned-off cells to sleep in with six to twelve bunks to a cell. Gumbo was like a gangster movie. In a matter of hours I was exposed to a different side of life from anything I had ever seen. I was booked, held, taken to court, and plopped into my new home. I was in a state of shock. I just remember thinking,
Oh my God
. My senses were dull yet overstimulated all at once.

On the first day, I was blessed to meet a woman named Kim. She was about fifteen years older than me. TVs were on in the common room filled with twelve to twenty-four random women. My story was on the news constantly, and each time I heard my name, I winced. I felt like crying, but I didn’t dare do it there. I wasn’t stupid. Jail was no place to show weakness. Kim kept coming around to tell me, “It’s okay honey. You come sit by me.”

I didn’t leave her side. Later on that evening, she said something that made me laugh. It was the first time I’d smiled in two days.

Apparently, this big, hefty girl sitting across the room thought I was laughing at her. She got up off her fanny, ran across the room, and hit me upside the head. I didn’t get a chance to react—not that I would’ve known what to do—because she ran away and sat right back down.

I didn’t know what to do. Kim told me to forget about it. I was terrified. I told the guards that I couldn’t sleep in an area where strange women clobber me for no reason. That night, I got moved across the hall.

I was even more scared there because I had no Kim. The inmates were starting to know who I was from the television. The news briefly mentioned allegations of abuse, but thankfully, the news was vague. Still, these women were cruel. Even though I came to find out most of them had also been sexually abused, they taunted me. Criminals look for the easiest way to hurt people, especially a newcomer. I was called “Daddy Fucker” and “Daddy Killer.”

I just tried to stay out of the way until I started to feel again. The problem was, I couldn’t feel.

As soon as a new inmate arrived, the guards gave out an ugly mustard-colored uniform—a short-sleeved jacket with big clear buttons and huge elastic-waist pants. Anytime we left our cell, we had to wear the uniform. The costume was embarrassing.

I was scared—and bored beyond all sanity. Gumbo’s rules included twenty-three-hour-a-day lockdown. We left only for meals, church, or recreation. We got to stretch our legs for recreation three times a week for an hour. My first few days were excruciatingly long. I had no idea what was in store for me there. Gumbo was just a holding cell for women while they waited for and went through their trials. Most were there for just a couple of weeks, maybe a month tops.

But my trial didn’t take place for nearly two years. The lawyers kept asking for extensions for this or that, and the judge kept granting their requests. My original judge stopped working on my trial, and I got a new one. Due to all the paper shuffling, I would reside in Gumbo longer than almost anyone else ever had.

Christy arrived to save me. She came from juvie in late August. At just fifteen, she had been certified as an adult to stand trial for conspiracy to commit murder. We were inseparable against the users and gang-bangers and thieves who seemed so foreign to us. It took us a few days to realize that we weren’t so different from them. We were criminals, too. Meanwhile, it took us exactly eight seconds to figure out that we had to start defending ourselves physically. In jail, one beats or gets beaten. I left that part up to Christy. If anyone hit either of us in the back of the head, Christy would kick her ass. Christy would not stop till she won. Nobody messed with Christy or her older sister.

We shared our locker, where we were allowed to keep snacks. I got $10 a month from Mom, and so did Christy. Together, we had $20. We used the money for soap, shampoo, Baby Ruths, and Snickers. I needed cigarettes and decent shampoo. Ten dollars wasn’t enough. I struggled without money in jail, and so did Christy. But our mom wasn’t exactly opening her wallet to help us. We didn’t call her to tell her what had happened—our grandmother did. Then, it took Mom a month to visit us from Guam.

She did not have money for an attorney. We had to use the public defenders. And she didn’t have money to give us to live. You needed more than $10 per month. These were only minor reasons my relationship with her was strained.

Shortly after Christy arrived at Gumbo from juvie, Mom came to visit both of us. We were in the communal visitors room while another inmate, Kathy Tucker—she was huge—was also finishing a visit. She sat next to me, keeping her eyes on us.

This was Mom’s first visit since Christy had arrived at Gumbo. It was the first time she’d faced her daughters together. Christy and I sat on one side of the table, and Mom on the other. We all held hands.

Mom still wanted to know what happened. She wanted answers, but we wouldn’t tell her anything.

I thought,
You weren’t there for us. I don’t have to spill my soul to you
. I just stared her down. I knew her side of the family was bad-mouthing me. I knew Dad’s side thought I was Resident Evil. Mom had clues that something bad was happening, but she chose to ignore them. I felt I had told her enough in the past. I’d be damned if I was going to tell her any more.

Mom started crying.

“Christy’s in jail! My baby’s in jail!” she said, sobbing. She wiped her eyes with her hands.

We were well aware of our situation, and we had cried enough about it in private. We had nothing to say. We were silent, just listening. That’s when Mom lashed out at me.

“Look what you did to your sister!” Mom screamed. “Look what you have done, Stacey.”

She took me by surprise. I was heated.

I said, “Look what I did?!” I thought,
I’m here doing everything I can to take the punishment myself
. I stood up. “Fuck you. You want to look at what
I
did? Really?!” I almost added,
You’re the one who wouldn’t let Christy come to Guam! You were the only person who could’ve done anything to help
. I held my tongue, but I couldn’t hold back my body. I lunged across the visting room table at her. I didn’t know what I was going to do to her.

Kathy Tucker grabbed me by the back of my shirt. She swooped one arm around me and picked me up in midair. She carried me to the door of the visitor’s room. She opened it and dropped me inside the inmate quarters. Kathy said to cool it because officers would lock me down for a stunt like that.

“Everyone at that table was disrespectful,” she said. “Don’t let it get the best of you. You should never let yourself lose control like that again.”

She was right. But I was still hot. I could not believe my mom could be so cruel and clueless. It occurred to me that I had killed the one parent who ever bothered to help us. As evil as Dad was most of the time, he knew how to fix things. Sober Dad was smart and made problems go away. Sober Dad paid when Christy hit the barn. Sober Dad paid for counseling sessions. Mom—in any form—always made things worse. The irony made me feel like puking right then and there.

I tried to pull myself together. It took a few minutes to convince myself to cool down and stop the nonsense. I told myself that Mom wasn’t worth my energy. I told myself to swallow my tears—and quick. After all, if I wanted to make a bad day worse, all I had to do was cry in the chicken coop.

I didn’t speak to my mother for a couple of years after that fight. If she blamed me so completely, then I had nothing to say to her. I wouldn’t call her. I wouldn’t let her come visit me. What was the point if we were just going to fight? Why bother if she was just going to make me feel more worthless than I already felt? I went through the days, weeks, months, and years of jail without my mother. I navigated my way through the legal system as a young adult—completely alone. I didn’t receive any advice from anyone in my family, other than now-sixteen-year-old Christy, as I went about the business of being charged with murder in the first degree.

I sent my mother yearly birthday cards. That was the most contact I could manage to have with Deborah.

Alone

fter I gave the police my confession, I was heartbroken that they still kept Christy in custody. They couldn’t question her, though, because at the time she was only fifteen, and still considered a minor. A parent had to be present. Dad was dead and Mom was in Guam, so the police called Marilyn Paulson. My grandma arrived and sat in the interrogation room while the police grilled Christy. Christy told authorities what they wanted to hear. She told them I had killed Dad for his money. She even wrote it out in a statement. She did this because I told her to, and she was fifteen. She didn’t know any better. She didn’t know that Dad had been raping me for the last ten years. If she was suspicious, I didn’t know, because we never talked about it. I kept her safe from all of those horrors. Of course she knew what Dad had done to her, but I didn’t want her to have to tell it. She shouldn’t be forced to admit that.

So she didn’t. I told her to take a plea bargain, avoid a trial, and get out of the system as soon as she could. I told her from the moment we were in police custody to do or say whatever the authorities wanted. I instructed Christy to say bad things about me if necessary. I wanted to take the blame.

Her job was to get out of there.

Her statement against me eventually got thrown out in court. It wasn’t admissible because Grandma Paulson wasn’t a parent, and Grandma had no legal right to be in the room.

But Christy got another chance. She was offered a plea bargain that would keep her from going to trial. If she pled guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, she’d get only five years. In lay terms, this means she made a plan—along with me—to kill him. She did nothing to stop his murder. This is not how either of us personally viewed the crime—I had no idea I would do what I did that night, and neither did she.

I supported her wholeheartedly because they were talking about life without parole for me, and they were offering her just five years.

“Take it!” I told her over and over. “Take it now!”

She was conflicted. She didn’t want to incriminate me any more than I wanted to be incriminated. We were both confused. We were two very young people just trying to do the best we could in a complicated situation. In the end, Christy didn’t really have another option. If she pled not guilty, she’d start traveling down the same road as me. She’d have to admit to being raped and be humiliated in court. After that, God only knew how many years of hard time she’d have to serve.

She took it. By January, Christy was gone from Gumbo jail. She wound up serving only two and a half years in prison at Renz Correctional Institution in Cedar City, Missouri. I was happy with her decision. It didn’t matter what had started the whole mess or what had created it; the outcome had become my responsibility. I was the older sister. I had a chance to keep her safe after I’d failed so miserably in the past. She’d be fine in prison. If she mouthed off, she could back it up with her fists. Nobody messed with Christy. Then when she got out, she would be safe from our father. Her well-being was something I could hold on to. I did not care about myself. I had nothing left in me. I had no sense of self-preservation or self-esteem. I was just a robot. The only fight I had in me was for her. The courts were lining up a hard life for me, and I didn’t want that life for her. When all was said and done, Christy got out when she was eighteen. She even had her GED.

I was offered a plea bargain, too. All I had to do was stand in front of the judge and say I committed the crime for monetary gain. The sentence would be fifteen years.

The prosecuting attorney wanted me to say I had killed my father for his money. Attorney Chris McGraugh, my public defender, tried to convince me to take it so I wouldn’t have to go through a long trial. With the plea, I would go straight to prison, a much better place than godforsaken Gumbo. Maybe I’d be in the same place as Christy. He loved to dangle the fifteen years in front of me—it was a lot better than a life sentence. I might have to serve only twelve years if I got out on good behavior.

I thought about it for about five seconds.

I would never agree to a false plea bargain.

I knew going to trial meant losing. After all, I had entered a not-guilty plea to a murder I’d already confessed to. I knew I was staring down a life spent in prison. But I also knew that I had already made too many wrong choices. I had covered up my past and I had lied about the gun and the crime.

If I was ever going to be free, this was my time.

Obviously, I wasn’t getting my physical freedom back. But I didn’t care about that. Emotionally, I could still make things right. I had to take a stand, and I did.

My case was headed to trial.

I was often pulled out of the monotony of jail for questioning, hearings, and meetings with my court-appointed lawyer. He would try to build a case based on battered spouse syndrome or maybe insanity. But to do so, he had to prove that I was abused.

A court-appointed psychologist started asking me questions. The psychologist recorded my story. I even told him about the time my grandfather had tried to touch me. To verify my story, the counselor called Grandma Paulson. Grandma told the psychologist—basically telling the whole court—that I was lying. She said Grandpa never touched me. She had visited me a few times up to that point, but then she stopped.

In a letter, Grandma Paulson said I was trying to destroy her family. She wrote, “How dare you make accusations against my husband.” She said all I had done was tear all the relatives to pieces. She told me to take back what I had said about Grandpa.

I wrote her back a nice letter. But I did not take back what I had said. For the first time in my life, I was committed to telling the truth.

I did not hear from her again. My letters to her never came back, but I’m not sure she read them. We haven’t spoken in almost twenty years.