Sweet Hell on Fire (25 page)

When I got inside the car and saw my husband, I knew I didn’t need the darkness. I was safe. He’d never let anyone or anything hurt me like that again. If I’d had tears left, I would have sobbed more with relief. My husband took one look at my face and immediately demanded what the fuck? I asked him to just drive, to get me away from there. So he did and I told him what had happened. He said I never had to go back if I didn’t want to. That I should quit and pursue my writing full time and that he’d get a second job again and that everything would be okay. He’d take care of me.

But I didn’t want to quit. Even after losing my shit all over the place like some little girl afraid of the dark. Even knowing that everyone would know, that I’d get a healthy ration of shit from everyone who could remember that day for the rest of my career.

I liked my job. I was good at it. Yes, I wanted to write full time. What writer doesn’t? But corrections was something to do that I could be proud of to pay the bills until my writing took off.

I’d made a total ass of myself, but that was distant to everything else. I decided to go to my doctor and get a note for a medical leave of absence so I could think about my options.

I bawled again when I told the doctor what happened. I was so embarrassed and disgusted with myself. She held my hand and listened. Then she wrote an excuse that said I was medically unable to work until further notice so I’d have all the time I needed to decide what else to do.

She also asked me if I needed any antidepressants or if I needed something to help me sleep. I confessed my drinking and I told her I didn’t want to medicate myself anymore. She understood, but made me promise that if things got bad, I’d come back in.

Spent the rest of the day with my kids. I took them to their favorite restaurant with animatronic dinosaurs and then we went walking by the river. I wanted to cry again, just watching them. It occurred to me that I had this second chance to be their mom. To be good at it.

I knew working at the prison wasn’t conducive to that. Not the shift I was on or the person I was when I was working there. The person I had to be behind the walls.

I’d take the rest of the time I had to think about it, but I’d known somehow when I left that day, I’d never go back inside as an officer. I’d broken like a rotten board. No matter the reason, I was damaged goods.

After the kids went to bed, I turned on my desktop and I opened a blank Word document and I started writing. It was a story about a witch who’d summoned a demon to get rid of her Russian mobster ex-boyfriend. The demon who became the hero sounded a lot like my husband in my head.

I went into Human Resources to talk to the manager about my job. Part of me had accepted I’d never be going back, but there was still part of me that didn’t want to be told I couldn’t. I was still trying to hang on because I knew I’d passed my first year and I was afraid I wouldn’t be good for anything else but corrections.

After telling my story to the human resources manager, she said she sympathized with my plight, but there couldn’t be any post I wouldn’t work if I wanted to keep my job. I offered to surrender my rank and take a demotion if I never had to work that post again. She said no.

I asked her about the disabled people we had working there. There were officers there who couldn’t do lots of things: some with pacemakers, with prostheses, all manner of disabilities. I was fucking raped. How did that not qualify for some leeway too?

She told me again if I couldn’t do all the posts, they didn’t want me. So I turned in my resignation.

And I was pissed.

I considered writing a letter to the warden, copying it to the Secretary of Corrections. I considered contacting activist groups. I even considered suing. I talked to a lawyer who told me I had one hell of a case.

I said I was sick and had to go home. They couldn’t lawfully keep me there. The lawyer told me to go down to the police station and file charges for kidnapping because they’d held me against my will for eight hours and tortured me by keeping me in a place that terrified me.

She was convinced I could even get a nice settlement for pain and suffering.

Maybe some people will think I was stupid for not pursuing my case, but I didn’t want that. I just wanted my job. Until then, I was a good officer.

And my husband, he was still employed there. He loved his job too. I couldn’t take that away from him. If I sued, they would have made his life a living hell. He wouldn’t have complained, he would have sucked it up and gone to work anyway. Until they found some reason to fire him. No, that’s the hand that still feeds my table and I’m smart enough not to bite it.

I thought about all the energy that goes into a case like that and I didn’t want to dwell on it, to wallow around in it like some pig in slops and hang myself up on the cross like some victim. I wanted to live my life. I wanted to be a good mother, a good wife, a good daughter. Those things were more important to me than vindication or validation. I survived it. Just like everything else that had punched me in the balls. What was the use in hanging on to it and letting it fester like some infection?

So I let go.

I let go of The Job, I let go of my rage, and I let go of my expectation that I was owed something for what I’d been through. The world didn’t owe me anything. Bad things happen to people all the time. Good people. Bad people. People.

But I could choose to be happy. I could choose to move forward rather than live in the past. I realized sometimes it takes more strength to let go than to hold on. It would have been easier to be pissed off, to have someone else to blame. A target for everything that hurt. Or I could file it away with everything else that had happened to me, pull up my big-girl pants, and choose what I would take from life rather than what it would give me.

So when I walked out of the building that day, the sun was shining bright on my face and I inhaled deeply, the air filling my lungs, expanding, pushing them as far as they could go. When I exhaled, it felt like I hadn’t been holding my breath for just that second, but for years. It was more than carbon dioxide spilling from me, but everything bad, everything rotten. I decided to leave my baggage at the gate. For real this time. I wouldn’t be picking it up again.

I was done.

It was barely dawn and the light was soft slipping through the gaps in the shades and the curtains to halo my whole world in a glowing, gold nimbus. My children, sleeping peacefully, their deep, even breaths a comfort—their skin perfect and smooth in the gentle light. My oldest daughter was tugging on her ear as she slept and my little one was curled into her. They looked like puppies that had been roughhousing and dropped where they stopped.

My husband was sleeping next to me, low rumbling in the back of his throat like some wild animal, but even that was dear to me. Even so, I still pinched his nose closed for just a moment so he’d roll over. If I hadn’t, I knew his throat would be sore when he woke up.

I breathed again.

It’s a simple thing, the mechanics of breath. The inhale, expanding, absorbing. The exhale, contracting, and expelling. I’d experienced the first taste of this on my escape from the room, and at the time, I’d never thought breathing could feel so good. Yet, this was even better; it was like decadence. It had never felt like happiness.

“Thank you,” I whispered quietly. For my breath. For the sun on my face. For my children, for my husband, for the power to choose.

And then I rolled over and pressed my face against my husband’s back, burrowed against the solid wall of him, his strength, and went back to sleep simply because it felt so good.

For all that I’d been through, I had this absolute surety that I was finally exactly where I was supposed to be.

I have so much to be thankful for, I don’t even need to start with the little things anymore and work my way up, although I am thankful for them as well. Sometimes the little things can be the biggest of all. I am thankful for everything that brought me to this place in my life.

Even the hard, ugly things that are difficult to talk about. They forged me; they forced me to learn lessons that I needed before I could move forward with my life. They taught me how to let go of rage and pain. How to find the joy in life when it seemed there wasn’t any. They taught me how to love someone more than myself, how to be a good mother, a good wife, a good daughter, and a good friend.

I also believe that some of these things had to happen to me because I’m strong. Not to break me, but because I’d come out the other side still swinging and I can share that with someone else who might not have the same armor I do. Knowing that my rapist might read this and know he got into my head, that’s a nasty feeling. Another violation, but fuck him because it’ll be worth it to know that maybe my voice touched someone else and let them know they’re not alone and there is life—good life—after rape. Or any other dark things that have touched their lives. It doesn’t have to define you. You define you.

In all the best stories, Happily Ever After is only earned through blood, sweat, tears, and sacrifice. So, for all the horror and darkness, I wouldn’t change anything. My life has been like a really good romance novel. Or at least the ones I like to read and write. There’s action and adventure, a spunky Amazonian heroine, and a handsome hero who is in just as much need of saving as the heroine. They both face internal and external dark forces, find their redemptive arcs, ride to each other’s rescue, and love conquers all.

And I lived Happily Ever After.

bean
hole
: an opening in the cell door where food and other items are passed to the inmate; in times past, chow usually consisted of beans, hence the moniker

blacksuits
: a special crew of officers who were supposed to be our elite; the guys we called when things got rough

Blue
Magic
: a brand of conditioner and hair pomade that is used for lube; at one time, the name also meant a kind of heroin, but in prison, it’s fast and easy lubrication for anal penetration

brass
: high-ranking officers

chester
: child molester

contraband
: any unauthorized item or an authorized item that has been altered from its original purpose that can induce harm

cred
: credibility

crunch
: canteen items, food stuffs

diaper
sniper
: child molester

dirty
bitch
detector
: that seemingly supernatural awareness that another officer is either bringing in contraband or riding the baloney pony with an inmate or four

fishing
line
: something the inmates use to “fish” to get a kite or other contraband into their cells; can be made of bed sheets and a pencil, twine, thread, or even garments

flag
: the ground floor of a cell house

hepatitis
: a nasty disease that involves liver failure

hooch
: homemade (vomit) liquor

house
: cell

kite
: note to one inmate from another or from a snitch to an officer

MRSA
: antibiotic-resistant poop bug

OIC
: officer in charge

PC
: pussy control (okay, not really); protective custody

plug
: something packaged to fit in the prison wallet

prison
purse
: vagina

prison
wallet
: anus

run
: another name for tier or a level of cells

sally
port
: a small controlled space with two doors; you must pass through one door and secure it before passing through the second

scabies
: itchy little bugs that build warrens under your skin and itch like the wrath of God

shank
: homemade knife

shes
: male inmates who carry themselves as women

skank
: see dirty bitch detector

snitch
: rat, someone who talks to the police

street
: the pavement between cell houses, i.e., the Max Street or the world outside the walls

taco
: vagina or man-taco (the anus); can be a feminized reference to “junk”

tier
: a level of cells

tower
rat
: an officer who rarely comes out of the tower to work the ground or a cell house