Noah Got Drunk: Frog Gravy 64

As I explained, our parrot knocked the camera out of my hand and broke it. I have located a new digital camera in a dumpster, but until I get a memory card into the thing to photograph documents and art, here is some Cyanide and Happiness: Spartacus.

Frog Gravy is a nonfiction incarceration account in Kentucky.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

Inmate names are changed.

Cell 107, McCracken County Jail, Winter, 2008

Breakfast this morning was strange, because to me, just listening, it sounded like locusts devouring a biblical country. Jail eating is not normal. Inmates gobble, hoard, smack, belch and fart. They yank and choke down food, slurp, slobber and grunt. The binge symphony is punctuated with the words Are You Gonna Eat That?

Here is what that looks like:

There is much trading, spooning, shoveling and hoarding and the handing back and forth sporkfulls of food. The binge symphony lasts for ten minutes and then guards and working Class D males pick up the trays.

Binge and sleep, binge and sleep, occurs three times a day, not including commissary days. On those days, some inmates binge before the binge.

For the women of this jail, there is absolutely nothing else to do except eat, watch TV and sleep. Only five Class D female final sentenced state inmates even work a job, and none of the female jobs involve outdoor or even hallway work. The remaining Class D final sentenced female inmates are revenue units for the jail and nothing more.

For these women, the days turn to months and then to years, and then they are released into the community and the street, with nothing to show for the time spent but massive weight gain and the thousand-yard stare.

Many of them will return.

I am seated at a steel table wearing a terry cloth towel equivalent of a tin foil hat on my head, looking at some papers. The first one is a Kentucky Jail Ministries (US 42 Florence KY 41042) church handout. It says:

I once read: God does not call the qualified, He qualifies the called. The world might say there are many reasons why God wouldn’t want to use you or me, but don’t worry:

Moses stuttered
Mark was rejected by Paul
Hosea’s wife was a prostitute
Amos’ only training was in the school of fig tree pruning
Solomon was too rich
Abraham was too old
David was to young
Timothy had ulcers
Peter was afraid of death
John was self-righteous
Naomi was a widow
Paul was a murderer
So was Moses
Jonah ran from God
Miriam was a gossip
Gideon and Thomas both doubted
Jeremiah was depressed and suicidal
Elijah was burned out
John the Baptist was a loudmouth
Martha was a worry-wart
Samson had long hair
Noah got drunk

In the cell, things go from bad to worse.We are already on ‘double secret probation,’ and are without phone and TV. We lost these things because Ruthie was on Sirkka’s bunk, getting her hair curled, for her mother’s funeral the next day. We lost these things for longer for Ruthie’s mother’s funeral than we did that time when the whole cell got busted smoking cigarettes.

Sirkka becomes progressively more infantile, manipulative, sexual and annoying, until finally she and Joyce get into hurling verbal insults at each other. Sirkka writes a note to the guards to get moved out, to a suicide cell. They move her. We do not know if she will return or not; she is running out of options and will soon have on her list of past addresses, every female cell in the jail.

I am relieved for the temporary quiet. While I do not want to attack her personally, because I like her and think she has a good heart, some of the things she did enraged me. Her food binges, for example. She would start grabbing at, asking for, and hoarding food until she had just a sick amount of food in front of her. Meat patties; four, five or six slices of bread; two, three or four helpings of mashed potatoes; mounds of cake and pudding. I had not even thought of my own struggle with bulimia in years, but having someone binge-eat in front of me several times a day, bothers me.

On top of that, she managed to eat and drink everyone else’s commissary, and talk people out of phone time, stamps, envelopes, paper, and anything else she could get. If you were away from your bunk, she took your blankets, or worse, demanded that you take your blankets and cover her up”like a baby,” and rub her back until she falls asleep “like a baby.”

In her waking hours, Sirkka walked around the cell half naked, screaming, yelling, giggling, and showing tits, ass and crotch to the Class D men working the hallway.

Her latest love interest on the outside is a crack-smoking married guy with four or five kids, that she had been sleeping with for drugs. When she leaves we all welcome the quiet. Turns out everyone hated the food binges. Plus, everyone hated her using their shampoo, soap, deodorant, hair brush, hair ties, and blankets.

At the same time we were all so annoyed, we felt sorry for Sirkka. We suspected that she came to our cell during a manic phase of a bipolar cycle. She was unmedicated. We dealt with her situation the best we could, and tried to remain kind.

All psychiatric medication was prescribed by a social worker, if it was prescribed at all. Perhaps an MD or ARNP was signing off on the prescriptions, but these people never laid eyes on the inmates, nor did they perform a single assessment. Given this deficiency in medical care, I had little hope that Sirkka would ever receive proper medical intervention during her stay in this jail.

I adjust the towel on my head and make my selection from the church handout before me:

Noah got drunk.

Interesting Links For 10-25-2011

A group of exonerated death row inmates, who are free today thanks to DNA, but who would likely be dead, had they been in Texas, get together and urge Perry to stop the death penalty in Texas.

Well There’s Your Problem

Kentucky Lieutenant Governor candidates clash on taxes, jobs and mining.

How many regular-sized helium-filled balloons does it take to lift someone? (hat tip shekissesfrogs, Firedoglake/MyFDL)

Helium Pants (hat tip Kelly Canfield Firedoglake/MyFDL):

Don’t fuck with an anaconda in a box (hat tip Ray):

The Dictionary, Trick Writing And The Bird: Frog Gravy 47

First, “The death penalty is hella fuckin’ balls-to-the-wall awesome…”:

The religious symbol Wine, Wheat, Sea, Grapes by Crane-Station on flickr. Jail Art: colored pencil, magazine ink and eye shadow. Drawn in Ricky’s World.

Frog Gravy is a nonfiction incarceration account in Kentucky in 2008 and 2009, in jails and in prison, and is reconstructed from my notes.

Inmate names are changed, except for nicknames that do not reveal identity.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

McCracken County Jail, Spring, 2008, Cell 107

After some frantic searching in the cell, Ruthie finds the photograph of her mother, who passed away. She finds it, finally, during a trip to the toilet; she had sat on it, and it was stuck to her ass.

Ruthie wants to know if her mother is in heaven, and if she is, will she be sending a signal to Ruthie, like when the lights in the cell flickered this morning. She asks me. I am not an expert in heaven (In fact these days I think I am more an expert in Hell), but I tell her that I believe in a spiritual realm, and I believe we will see our loved ones when we die.

Tina, who takes a literal view of scripture, says, “She’s just asleep, until He comes to judge. You know, like when you go to sleep and…and that’s where your mother is…And the devil will reign for seven years. And, if you don’t have that number, you won’t be able to buy things, or eat things…”

I hear this, and cannot get the words out of my head: And he shall reign forever and ever…For Ever and Ever, Hallelujah, Hallelujah… and I wonder if it is indeed true that Handel wrote the Messiah in, like forty-five minutes during a manic psychotic break. At any rate, the man is a genius, and even though he writes of God’s reign and not the Satan that will be scanning our computer chips for the mark of the beast to see whether or not we can shop at the WalMart In The Sky, the Messiah is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written.

In this cell, in this mixture of madness and sadness that is condensed as though cooked under reflux, I adjust the towel on my head, and continue working on the jailhouse dictionary we are composing. Down the hall, Harry shouts from his isolation cell, “PLEASE! Let me OUT!! Help me! HELPMEhelpmehelpmehelpmehelp.” I am reminded of the acronym GOMER, which means “Get Out Of My Emergency Room,” but if you read House Of God by Samuel Shem, you will know this, of course.

Spork: a jailhouse eating utensil that is a plastic hybrid of fork and spoon.

No-shank pen: a flimsy, short version of the ballpoint that has been rendered useless as a weapon.

Hot on the walk: A very good looking Class D nonviolent male working the hallway, such as the one who, from time to time graces us with a view of his erect penis from the broom closet down the hallway. You have to get on tiptoes and strain a bit to see this, but it’s worth it.

Kentucky taxpayers spend something in the neighborhood of $30,000 per year per non-violent war-on-drugs inmate for us to sit in a cold cell, composing a twisted urban dictionary and gazing at the occasional male specimen of perfection. Kentucky. Fuck yeah.

Christie explains trick writing to me in a bit more detail. Trick writing has afforded her the opportunity to pay restitution to her check-writing victims and obtain canteen supplies that she needs to live, such as shampoo and other hygiene products. I am fascinated, and although I have never trick written myself, I would venture to guess that trick writing alone is a multi-billion dollar industry in this country.

There are a good many men who are interested in contacting and developing correspondence relationships with locked up women. Contrary to popular belief, the men are not always interested in sex, or in sexual letters. They are more interested in having a pen pal. There are many sites on the internet that advertise for prison and jail pen pals. Many relationships are long-lasting, and often, particularly if the female inmate has no viable family ties any more, the pen pals are all she does have. Not infrequently, the pen-pal relationships evolve into long-term relationships and marriages.

Christie’s pen pals come from all over the country: Maine, Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico. A nudist in Indiana (who looks like he came straight out of the movie “Revenge Of The Nerds”, she points out). A marathon runner in Texas. A professor who speaks French and Italian.

We eat lunch: chicken breast, one slice of white bread, carrots, broccoli and vanilla wafers. After lunch I go into the toilet and climb onto the steel sink, and look through the tiny, scratched out slit in the ghosted-out, bullet proof window. There are the dumpsters.

And a bird! Oh my God a bird! What a blessing. I got to see, even if for a fleeting moment, a bird.

And this is the highlight of my day. If God could bring me just one bird to see each day, I will be happier than ever.

What It Is Like To Live In A Community: Frog Gravy 46

Behind the scenes, the Frog Gravy notes. When I say that Frog Gravy is reconstructed from my notes, you may wonder what the notes look like. Here are some of them.

And, in the Spirit of Halloween:

Ghost and bats. Felt tip pen. By Crane-Station on flickr. Prison art.

A while back, I blogged What It Is Like To Live In A Community on Firedoglake/MyFDL. I actually wrote it while I was in prison, but I had no idea where the essay was until today, when I came across it in my notes.

Being in prison is a lot like being a passenger on a train. The community members are transient and so, although you live in one location, you never feel quite grounded as though you are at home. Although I became very close with Christie (who I named after Christie Brinkley) and Tina (who I named after actor Tina Louise), other inmates passed through my strange prison life like ghosts. Just when I would get to know intimate details of someone’s life, she was gone.

I have always been fascinated with groups. Anything more than two people, I think, is enough to formulate a group. I find group dynamics most interesting. In women’s prison, the group is a group of people in nearly constant crisis. Inmates have been separated abruptly from everything that once defined them, and they become a faceless number. A criminal outcast, whose life is forever divided into two parts: the before and the after. This division is sometimes compounded when a family member, a child in particular, dies on the outside. I saw this happen, more than once.

Incarceration is akin to being psychologically raped. I have always been a loner for the most part, and being forced to live with women was like being forced to befriend a group of feral cats. Still, I had hope that the members of the group could recognize their commonality rather than their differences, and work together toward a common goal of redefining the second half of their lives to incorporate the prison experience in a positive, rather than a negative way.

The key, I think, is in forgiveness, and in letting go of resentments. For me, this is a work in progress, or, as they say in the recovery program, “progress not perfection.”

What It Is Like To Live In A Community

A community is like a boat. Everyone must grab an oar and row. Otherwise, the boat just sits in the water.

Some people have oars, but their oars are not quite in the water, so it is really good to help them, to find their oar and get it into the water.

Sometimes half of the people are working really hard, and rowing forward, while the other half is working really hard to row backward, or sideways. In this case, the boat does not go anywhere; it just zigs and zags and circles and sits, attracting attention from other boats in the sea, who look and point and laugh and laugh. So it is really good to try and be sure that everyone rows in the same direction.

Sometimes people get tired and mad, and they throw their oars, so you have to be really careful and duck. Otherwise, an airborne oar could chop your head off, and your head would flop and splat across the deck, and slip and slide and splash into the water, where the hungry sharks are waiting, to tear your head to bits and eat it.

Other times, people may get to fighting over their oars, and they say things like: Your oar is ugly, or Yours has holes and so does your mama, or Well, your mama’s so fat she plays pool with the planets, or You don’t even have an oar, do you, or You do you and I’ll do me, or Who’s the bitch that stole my motherfuckin’ oar.

And then they all start fighting and beating the living crap out of each other with their oars, and throwing each other overboard, where the hungry sharks are waiting, to tear them to bits and eat them.

People might fall in love and forget to row altogether. So they sneak in and out of portholes, and up and down the ladders at the back of the boat all hours of the night, and write notes to each other, and set up meetings. Since no one is really rowing, to speak of, the boat goes nowhere. It just rocks and rocks and rocks, and the hungry sharks laugh and laugh because they know that sooner or later a couple of lovers will fight, as they always do, and someone will get tossed overboard, for the sharks to tear them to bits and eat them.

It is good to have a nautical chart. Otherwise, the boat will get lost, and people will try to jump off and swim, but they don’t stand a chance, because the sharks will tear them to bits and eat them, and stuff themselves, then sink to the bottom of the ocean and sleep.

One day, when everyone is rowing in the same direction and following the chart, the boat will be the envy of all the seas. Other boats will notice that everyone is tan and healthy, and they will never know that there was a time when its occupants were beating the living crap out of each other and turning each other into shark food.

People on the boat will notice a whole new world out there, and they will say, we don’t have to stop at that little piece of land after all, because we can row to the land of our dreams!

Freaks Share Thanksgiving Dinner: Frog Gravy 45

Umbrella Cockatoo pair by Crane-Station on flickr. Jail art from Ricky’s World. Colored pencil, magazine ink and ink.

Frog Gravy is a nonfiction account of women’s incarceration in Kentucky jails and prison, in 2008 and 2009, and is reconstructed from my notes.

Inmate names are changed, except for my own, and for nicknames that do not reveal identity. My prison nickname was Bird Lady.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

Frog Gravy posts are gathered in one place at froggravy.wordpress.com, and, to get to older posts may take some backward scrolling through the “Older Posts” instruction.

Pe Wee Valley Women’s Penitentiary (KCIW) near Louisville, KY, Thanksgiving, 2008.

After my release, I continued my compulsive note-taking, but since I was unemployable I could not afford to buy paper, so I dove a dumpster and retrieved a spiral notebook with blank paper it it, and in the side pocket was a beautiful restaurant menu composed by, I assume, a culinary student at the local college. The chef is anonymous, but I would like to hat tip him or her and say that I enjoy the imaginary dinner from time to time in my mind.

It says:

First Course

Lobster and Maryland Crab Timbals
Fresh Maine Lobster and Jumbo Lump Crabmeat
Presented in a tower with mango pearl couscous,
strands of orange zest, sprigs of fresh dill and infused lemon oil,
presented with cucumber and radish pearls, blood orange slices and fresh lobster claw

At approximately the same time the student was composing his culinary opera, I was having Thanksgiving dinner with Lexie, Olivia and Sarah, in the penitentiary, compliments of the State of Kentucky and Aramark. I have no idea what a timbal is, but let’s say for fun that we had timbals of turkey, with unsalted mashed potatoes resurrected from a storage unit in a foreign country most likely and congealed, pearled gravy that reminded me, oddly, of either ZZ Top or my high school days in the backseat (or was it the front?) of a car. They serve everything with gravy on it, even KoolAid. /s

For the strands of orange zest, I went ahead and ate the entire orange, including the peel, because I had not had a fresh piece of fruit in nearly a year.

It took us quite a while to get to the penitentiary restaurant, where we did not have reservations, because I had to push Olivia in her wheelchair, and Olivia is surprisingly heavy. Olivia is diabetic, and had a stroke while she was in jail. The jail staff claimed she was faking it, and so she laid on the cement in her own drool and urine for like, three days, before she made it to prison. But first, they shackled her and prodded her to an awaiting van, just as they did me for my Hannibal Mammogram, only Olivia, who is eighty years old, is not quite as spry as I am, and so she fell getting into the van and permanently injured her knee.

Olivia has little use of her right side, so she cannot push her chair or bus her tray. She relies on inmates to get to and from appointments and meals, and since she is housed in the same dormitory as I am, which is Ridgeview Dormitory (the farthest dormitory from the dining hall, I might add), I will push her to this wonderful meal of thanks that we share.

Over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go. Past all the inmate chit chat such as, “Oh yeah. She done got sent to cell block for mailing pussy hairs to her boyfriend,” and “…bitch just starts hittin’ me for no reason.” La-la la laaa. Over the river and through…

Olivia has no teeth. Her face droops from the stroke, so it’s a little hard to understand her. She is in prison for forging a prescription for a dying friend, and I ask her what medication it was, and she says, “I think it might have been some red pills.”

I help to push and serve Olivia, and make sure she gets her evening diabetic snack to take back to Ridgeview Dormitory. She is indigent and cannot afford hard candy, so low blood sugar is just a risk she lives with, in prison.

Back to our culinary student.

Second course

Herb and spice roasted tenderloin
Tenderloin of beef rubbed with a blend of fresh rosemary, thyme, garlic, bay leaves, shallots, orange zest, sea salt, black pepper, nutmeg and cloves, slow marinated, roasted, sliced and served over pearl onions and button mushrooms with a pan reduction sauce finished with red wine, brandy and butter. Green and white asparagus and oven roasted tomatoes; small potato ramekin with yukon potato, sweet potato and sweet onin with parmesan cheese.

Good grief. It’s Whole Foods on steroids. Here in prison we are on our second course: stuffing. Stuffing and cranberry sauce are the best part of Thanksgiving, and I am truly thankful because we have both. Plus, the stuffing even has flecks. If you mix the cranberry sauce with the orange peel in your mouth, you are as good as in your childhood home, with your mother’s unrivaled cornbread stuffing, made in an iron skillet with bacon grease. And oysters. I could eat a whole skillet of that, and then retire to an afternoon of walking in the woods, followed by watching college football.

Lexie is about my age, and she is mostly deaf, so you have to face her directly to speak with her, so she can read your lips. She seems to have a thyroid disorder that makes the eyes protrude a bit, the name escapes me, but it adds to her overall anxious appearance. Lexie got kicked out of drug court and is serving out a ten year sentence. Her addiction of choice was gambling and not drugs, and her original charge may have been for petty theft, but I am not sure. At any rate, during her drug court days, someone spotted her on the boat. I had no idea why it would matter that she was on a boat to start with, but apparently, in this area, they have river boats that people gamble on, and so someone called in their observation to the police, and her drug court was revoked, and now she is serving more time than she could have ever imagined, and that is, I think, ten years.

Lexie cries all the time, and she becomes so upset that she cannot complete Thanksgiving dinner with us, and so Robin, the inmate that swallowed razor blades upon admission to the prison, accompanies Lexie back to her dorm.

Sticky toffee pudding with caramel sauce
An individual moist dense dried fruit pudding with a
crunchy toffee crust served with caramel sauce, macadamia
nut toffee brittle shards,
spun sugar, served with dolce de leche ice cream.

You know what. This guy deserves an A, don’t you think?

Pass passion fruit, white pepper and tarragon dark chocolate truffles.

Sarah and I enjoy our desert of pumpkin squares, and I am planning Thanksgiving dinner for my birds as well, so I squirrel away some crumbs for my beautiful little bird troupes, and this will be the highlight of my Thanksgiving. Had I not come here, I would not have these birds to share thanks with.

Sarah killed her brother-in-law in a car accident where she was driving. Her blood analysis showed just about everything but the kitchen sink. Sarah and I will become close friends in prison. She is the one whose father will commit suicide the day after Christmas, but I will not get to spend much time with her because her sentence, three years, is so brief compared to mine.

The last item on this menu is curious.

It says:

“To-go outside later at the buses.”

The Rapture Research Project

I wrote this a while back, and am just now getting around to posting it here. I will be posting a new Frog Gravy chapter this evening.

It was a sad day in Hell.

Everyone was miserable.

Scott Walker was in the devil’s office to lodge a complaint. He was assigned to stoke one of the hottest ovens, in one of the deepest parts of  Hell, with his partner, Rick Scott.

“I don’t get paid enough,” complained Walker.

“Well I’ll be dipped in shit.”

“No, really,” Walker whined. And that partner, Rick, you-all got me assigned to? Makes me want to shower and check for my wallet. I wanna talk to my union representative.”

“Bitch, you in Hell,” crooned the devil. “How you think you got any collective bargaining rights when you in Hell?”

“Uh, I…”

“I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do, since I’m feelin’ uh, generous today.”

In the background, Rick Scott screamed, “I AM NOT INSANE!!! I am not INSANE! Let me out! Oh, PLEASE let me OUT OF HERE!!!”

“Think about it Rick. You are not making sense!” shouted Glenn Beck.

“Haltz mau, dummkaupf,” screamed Hitler.

“I’ll pump you full of buckshot and rope you to the hood of my car if you don’t shut  up, Rick,” screamed Dick Cheney. When we get outta here I swear I am going to kill you.”

“We’re never getting out, Dick, if ya think about it,” said Glenn Beck. “We have been here for ten thousand years already. You are not making sense. This does not make any sense.”

“Did you know,” mused Charlie Manson, “That some motherfucker out there owes me money. And when I get out of here I’m gonna…”

“Hey, Glenn,” whispered Rush Limbaugh. “Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“That’s your momma.”

“That’s your momma who?

“That’s your momma knock-knock-knockin’ her head against the headboard when I…”

“You are not making sense. This does not make sense. NONE of this makes any sense.” Glenn was miserable. He began to cry.

“America. Fuck yeah,” said [delete this post, or select payment type].

In the foreground,  in the devil’s office, the conference continued.

“I’m gonna transfer you to telemarketing, Scott. Piece of cake. All you do is answer phones. All day long. Every day. For ever.”

“Oh but I, well no… that’s worse! Plus, I, I’m sick. I got this, like, tapeworm or something, from the water down here. Why can’t I have any bottled water?”

“Plastic fucking bottles,” said the devil. “Who do you think I am, anyway, fart-knocker? Even I recycle.”

Rush Limbaugh overheard this and said, “I can vouch for that. I’ve been assigned to dive dumpsters, for all of eternity. The dude does recycle.”

“And while I am at it, I’m gonna reassign Rick. To the same room as you. He’ll be writing on the chalkboard: ‘I am not a criminal scumbag. I am a Republican.’ “You think five hundred times was a lot? Think again. This is Hell, not Sunday school.”

“But, but…” stammered Scott Walker. But suddenly he felt the poke of a pitchfork to his backside.

While Scott Walker was being escorted through the halls of Hell to his new work site, they overheard:

“Nope. No Dubya-em-dees in here,” said George Bush. “I looked already.”

“Look again, frat boy. This place IS a WMD.

 

disclaimer: This is a…roast. Pure fun. First attempt at ‘political’ writing.

Prison Life: Frog Gravy 42

My sister’s cocker spaniel Roxi by Crane-Station on flickr. Jail art, colored pencil. My sister is a champion at the precise art of weaving, hence, “Weave-On.” A fellow inmate, who was a dog groomer, sat with me and described some of the finer points of cocker spaniels to me, so that I could do this drawing. Hence, the great big feet and the long, pretty ears. Roxi is very sweet. She is also a hot mess! Very wound up.Drawn in Ricky’s World.

Music for this post post is CEBU dancing inmates:

Frog Gravy is a nonfiction account of women’s incarceration in Kentucky jails and prison, in 2008 and 2009, and is reconstructed from my notes.

Inmate names are changed, except for my own, and for nicknames that do not reveal identity. My prison nickname was Bird Lady.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

Frog Gravy posts are gathered in one place at froggravy.wordpress.com, and, to get to older posts may take some backward scrolling through the “Older Posts” instruction.

PeWee Valley Women’s Penitentiary, KCIW, Spring, 2009.

At five-forty-five every morning, the fluorescent lights buzz and snap on throughout the penitentiary, and we are awakened with the cheery overhead announcement, “Goood morning KCIW, this is your five-forty-five AM wake-up call,” that sounds exactly like “Gooood morning Viet Nam,” only with different words.

My roommate, Miss Pat, a kind black lady who loves her grandchildren, and I get ready for school. Breakfast is served in the dining hall at around 6 AM, but I usually skip it and study, because early morning has always been my best study time.

I have designed a rather nice imaginary greenhouse for Horticulture, if I may say so myself, for about $34,000. It is a 28′ x 96′ “Quonst”-style, plastic (polyethlylene) covered house, with fan-and-pad cooling, nice heaters, fans and lights, and a bit of high-tech environmental control.

I chose sub-irrigation. The benches are fitted for ebb-and-flow. Water is pumped into the benches, the pots take up what they need, and then the benches drain. I even chose this irrigation method for propagation (germination) over misting, because I think misting can invite fungus problems.

I’ve read that Europe, which is eons ahead of us in horticulture, has switched to nearly 80% ebb-and-flow. In fact, what is growing (so to speak) in popularity over there is flood floors, floor benches, where the whole thing is flooded and then drained. Fertilizer and insecticide can be delivered in this way.

Mealtimes in the prison are very busy, and the dining hall is always crowded. Dormitories are called at staggered time intervals to address the crowding, but often, inmates linger after the next dorm is called in. One chair in the dining hall is elevated and cushioned and it has a sign on it that says, “Reserved for Jackie.”

I am going to burn in Hell like a twig for writing this, but when I see Jackie for the first time, I cannot take my eyes away, because she has no arms, and is eating with her feet. But I can’t help it, I am mesmerized. She can do things with her toes that I cannot do with my hands, let alone my feet. In fact, she does everything with her feet and even does unassisted outdoor work in the yard with strength and precision. Her adaptation makes me feel like a clumsy klutz.

At some point, I ask Christie (who was initially sent here after her drug court denial) why Jackie is here, and Christie tells me that she was convicted of shaking her baby to death on the outside, a case of shaken baby syndrome. At some point, in my room, when no one is around, I try to get my feet to within range of my face and I cannot do it.

I have written to the Kentucky Innocence Project and requested DNA testing for the inside and the outside of the “baggie” in my case, but my request is rejected, because I am not on death row, I suppose.

Back at school, my greenhouse is a production operation, so the benches run the length-of-house. There are five benches, three movable (rolling), so the aisle is ‘floating,’ and the aisle is just wide enough for carts- this maximizes the growing area.

After school, I am picked, for no reason whatsoever, to be the subject of guard/officer Ogletree’s (who I call “Ogre,”) torment-a-white-inmate game. She prods and insults me all the way to main laundry, and forces me to change into clothing fit for a child. Fortunately, I have spare clothing, but I am in tears all of the sudden, because for some reason, this humiliation gets to me. I speak to Officer Kennedy, a kind officer, trained in negotiation, who will go on, I believe, to be Assistant Warden at a different prison after my release. Kennedy is very helpful, and I am able to return to the dorm, to walk through the inmate insult lines and laughs, all the way back to my room.

As I said before, it would not surprise me if Ogletree spoke backward or neighed like a horse, or spoke in a combination of previously untranslated ancient languages, because she is at the least, an egregious human being.

I wanted to say to her, “Bitch, I did not invent slaves. My ancestors were poor. They farmed their own land until they lost everything.” But it would not do any good. She uses her badge to berate, belittle, and humiliate, and grievances go nowhere.

Sometimes I think I am wasting my time with God, and maybe I should just throw in the towel and worship Satan. He is winning, anyway. Why try so hard to search for God, look for the good in people, seek truths, stand up for something, and try to be a better person, when it is so easy to just join in with the Father Of Lies?

McCracken Horror Picture Show: Frog Gravy 41

Horses. Jail Art by Crane-Station on flickr. Colored pencil, pen and magazine ink.

Frog Gravy is a nonfiction account of Kentucky jails and prison in 2008 and 2009, and is reconstructed from my notes.

Inmates names are changed, except for nicknames that do not reveal identity. My name is real.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

Frog Gravy posts are all here: froggravy.wordpress.com, although to get to older posts will take a bit of backward scrolling through the “older entries” instruction.

McCracken County Jail, Paducah KY, cell 107, March, 2008

Christie and YaYa have just gotten into a loud verbal fight over boobs.

Christie, who looks like Christie Brinkley, has perfect boobs, as she says, “best boobs money can buy,” and we all enjoy looking at them, and so do the Class D men working in the hallway. When Christie is in the shower, YaYa insults her for displaying her wares to the men on occasion, and Christie becomes hopping mad. She’d rather be in general population, she claims, than to be in a cell with YaYa. She pounds on the steel door.

A guard comes to the door and says, “All I can tell you is that this jail is full and I don’t got no time to play Kindergarten Cop, so you’d best kiss and make up because I can tell you that if one of you goes outa here, you’re goin’ onto concrete. I ain’t got no place else to put you, so if one of you goes onto concrete, you both go.”

Things calm down. It is my TV day because I cleaned the cell, and so I adjust the towel on my head, get up from my sheaf of no-shank jail notes and collection of origami cranes, and change the channel to the news.

Down the hall, Harry shouts from his isolation cell, “HELLLLP!! Let Me OUT!!! Helpmehelpmehellllp me. Please! HELP!”

In the cell, Meg gets off the phone with her trick, talking about she “got plenty of bidness,” and she and YaYa exchange family photographs with each other.

Meg, who has nine children, including six-month-old twins, says, “And that baby was tiny, only this big, but his nuts, I’m telling you, his balls hang down to his knees…and this is the older three’s baby’s daddy, and my baby’s daddy of the middle four kids, this is him, he’s 28, and my twins’ baby’s daddy is 24, and this is him. He’s mixed. The other two are black.”

YaYa says, “This is my son’s baby’s daddy, and this is my daughter’s baby’s daddy that stays with my mama, and this baby’s mama is in prison, and, I keep these. This is my family. I have to rely on my own family, you see what I’m sayin.’ You find out who your friends are when you come up in here.”

Lunch arrives, and we eat potatoes, greens, chicken and a cookie (did I mention that the food in McCracken County Jail is actually quite good?) On the TV screen we see that a group of Amish men in neighboring Graves County have been pulled over and cited for not displaying a large, reflective orange triangle on their horse-drawn buggy. They will fight the charges, because they believe the orange symbol on their buggy violates their religious beliefs and practices.

“I heard this story once,” I say. “Horse-drawn buggy got pulled over for a DUI. The driver had been drinking, and his friends loaded him into the buggy. The man spoke German and so did the horse. The man’s friends told the horse in German to go home. Seems to me the horse was sober, and the horse was the driver. Just sayin.'”

“People get DUIs on all sorts of stuff around here,” says Christie. “Riding lawn mowers. That’s common.”

“Huh. Yeah,” I say, “There was that guy in town that was convicted of a DUI in his electric wheelchair.”

After lunch, we watch Jerry Springer on TV and Christie and I get ready for the 7:30 church service with the local faith-based treatment group, Ladies Living Free. I am hoping for placement into their residential program, as a probationary status alternative to a prison sentence. Ladies Living Free takes into account attendance records at their services, and so, Christie and I give ourselves three-and-a-half hours to prepare. We spend the afternoon doing our hair and applying makeup that we manufactured from magazine ink and FireBalls. The magazine ink, truth be told, looks better than some of the stuff I got at Sephora in Seattle, when I had money, back in the day.

Jerry Springer is hosting ‘Hillbilly Games II.’ Which means there was a Hillbilly Games I. On the screen, one obese woman says to another, “I’m gonna kick your ass, bitch,” and then they both strip off their outer clothing and get into a pool sort of affair, that has about four-and-one-half inches or so of Pork-and-Beans in it, and start whaling on each other, shouting obscenities all the while. So now, the TV is beeping a bunch, and two scantily clothed fat women fight in a child’s swimming pool of Pork-and-Beans, while some guy stands on the sideline playing the banjo.

I have seen a bunch of these shows now, during my residence here, and I’ve met people who cannot read or write and neither can their parents or grandparents, and this very jail, in fact, bans education, and no one gives a shit, unless the WalMart is closed.

Finally, in the evening, after an afternoon of meticulous preparation and homework completion, Christie and I stand at the steel door, waiting for the start of Ladies living Free.

But the start time comes and goes, and the other population cells have already been paraded past our cell and into the chapel, but we are not included in the service.

We pound on the door and a guard comes. Christie asks, “Why can’t we go to church with the others? We are going to be late.”

The guard says, “It’s considered 12-Step for ladies.”

“It has nothing to do with the twelve steps,” says Christie. “It’s church!”

“It’s twelve step.”

“Well good!” I say. “We’re here on drug charges, and the only twelve-step requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking and using. They don’t discriminate.”

“You are not allowed to go.”

“Then tell them the jail will not allow our attendance so that they will not be led to believe it is us.”

“I cain’t do that.”

“Bring a grievance form, please.”

Grievance and response. McCracken County Jail, Paducah, KY, March, 2008.

Christie and I file a joint grievance. It says:

We previously had this issue regarding Sgt. Tiffany deciding which cells get to attend church & which ones don’t Once again Are we not allowed the same options as EA and WA?-cells[?] They attend both services in one day yet we are not allowed the same treatment. She doesn’t even ask if we want to go and it is not due to any disciplinary action. I would like a copy to this grievance when your response is noted that is photocopied clearly, please.

The response:

Sometimes church runs late and doesn’t get started on time. Sometimes ministers have things to do and runs short (sic). You are not on disciplinary actions. EA/WA were the only ones that went and it was quick. We’ll address this later.

EA and WA included the entire female jail population, except for us and the isolation/hole cells.

YaYa emerges from the toilet with a wad of tissue and says to me, “Look, Rachel, a sewer fly.”

“A what?”

“A sewer fly. You know. A sewer fly. They comes up outa’ the sewer.” The squirming fly is about the size of these typed letters, and it is almost translucent. That means there are maggots down there.

So, I guess our disinfectant, that I used to clean the cell with this morning, is not working all that well.

Lighter note. Steve, the lawnmower guy taser DUI lawnmower:

Med Line: Frog Gravy 40

Heart and flower jail art by Crane-Station on flickr. Ink, eye shadow, magazine ink and colored pencil.

Author’s note: Frog Gravy is a nonfiction account of incarceration, first in jails and then in prison in Kentucky, during 2008 and 2009, and is reconstructed from my notes.

Inmate names are changed, except for nicknames that do not reveal identity.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

PeWee Valley Women’s Penitentiary (KCIW), Winter, 2009

I am standing on the ball field with a group, waiting for med line to be called. I am in the med line before the med line. Since we are officially at rec and not in med line yet, we can still talk and move about. There is a heated conversation going on nearby.

I ask my hillbilly friend in a wheelchair, “What are they arguing about?”

“It’s about some pussy. Ain’t ’bout no dick. Ain’t ’bout no money. It’s all ’bout some pussy.”

The argument continues:

“Your answer to everything is dick.”

“I’m strictly dickly. If there ain’t a dick swinging I ain’t interested.”

“Well, I’ve done had my share of dicks in life and there ain’t no dick that can make you come like a woman can.”

Another inmate chimes in. Using her fist, she grabs an air penis, does and little dance and says, “He teases me and he goes from the clit to the hole and then the clit to the hole until I cain’t stand it and he puts it in. And that’s how we do it in my neighborhood.”

Med line is called and we start the race to get to the medical building. No running is allowed. This is Inmate Special Olympics. Sometimes I ask to push a wheelchair inmate, because, in shopping cart fashion, with the roll, I can increase my speed, just like in real marathons on the outside.

At med call, I am no lomger Bird Lady, or a wife, or a mother or a nurse, or a scuba diving lover or an Old People’s Soccer Player. I am “218896.” When I reach the med line window and call this inmate number, the nurse on the other side of the window will punch some pills out of blister packs. There is the Accept The Unacceptable Pill. Actually there are two of these now, because after speaking with my psychiatrist, the Accept The Unacceptable dose was doubled. And the there is the Fewer Nightmares pill, otherwise known as the Do The Time Don’t Let The Time Do You pill.

I live in a world where women deliver babies and attend their son’s and daughters funerals in shackles. Where family members die, are born, murdered, killed, married, divorced, moved, educated, baptized, enlisted, converted and shipped, while we make up some sort of a life behind razor wire. We are hated, loved, accepted, rejected and endlessly talked about. I have no voice in here, no say or reaction to any of the outside events. I am 218896, about to take some prison-issue Accept The Unacceptable pills, because that way, my world in here is supposed to make sense to me.

Today in school I learned that you can make a whole career out of ferns.

Med line is about an hour long, and we are not allowed to talk. I reflect on an event that happened in med line before the med line. Another inmate had found a baby bird that I had been tending to, in the yard, and had taken it to a guard. The bird was a fledgling. The guard took it to underneath a tree on the ball field and stomped it to death in full view of all of the inmates. He made a point then, of walking past me and grinning, and laughing, as he wiped the gore on the pavement, taunting me.

I briefly fantasized about killing him on the spot. After all, killing in Kentucky brings a less severe sentence that the one I am serving, and I could construct a strong argument, I think, that this person simply ‘needed killin.’

But then I remembered that someone once said that Checkmate is a let down: tormenting your opponent is more satisfying. This bird-killing-and-enjoying-it guard is bespectacled and boyish looking. He was probably bullied. So now he’s just getting a little action himself, although in a chickenshit way, because we are inmates. Behind razor wire, we must restrain ourselves from delivering a good ass-ramming to the guards, and he knows this, and so, he walks around the ball field with that stupid grin and Nazi mindset, figuring out how he can bolster his own weakness by picking on defenseless people. He does this full time.

I came across an article this winter that said that Kentucky is laying off 275 teachers. It said nothing about people such as this guard that are employed full time to torment. It said nothing of the people employed in the prison industry to, for example, go through our mail and confiscate such things as bird feathers (this happened to me) and listing them in documents as potential tattooing instruments. These actions will, Kentucky assures the taxpayers, make Kentucky a safer community.

So, that leaves me, in here, to teach Kentucky’s Left Behind things like their times tables and how to count back cash register change and how to get the “x” onto one side of an equation and everything else on the other, to solve for the “x.” I try to make math fun by saying things like, “By the end of this session, you will know how to multiply or divide any number in the world by ten.”

I am close to the med window now. My friend who used to be my Spades partner in Ridgeview Dormitory comes to the chain link fence. She was moved to the medical building full time, when she was discovered talking to the trees and bushes in the main yard one day. She is in prison because one day, her husband (common law) of many years convinced her to try some crack. She did, and then she slit his throat with a hatchet, called the police, and retired to the front porch to smoke a cigarette and wait for their arrival, while the husband crawled, slipped and slid around on his own blood in the kitchen. When the crack wore off they still loved each other. He died while she was in prison here, and then she went into mental decline and was deemed unfit for general population.

I reach the window and call out “218896,” and out comes the blister pack, and the dose of Accept The Unacceptable, and the dose of Do The Time Don’t Let The Time Do You.

Prison is not just a circle. It is a sphere.

Lighter note: My Nuts Itch.

Jail And Prison Commissary

McCracken County Jail, Paducah, KY commissary list, partial list.

Ricky’s World, Fulton County Detention Center, Hickman, KY, partial list.

KCIW, Kentucky Correctional Institute for Women, PeWee Valley, KY, partial commissary list.

The prison commissary is a canteen, or store, where inmates purchase hygiene products, food items, stamps, paper, and pretty much everything they will use beyond the barest essentials. Jails will issue what resembles a distressed traveler kit upon admission, but nothing more, unless the inmate qualifies for indigent commissary, which is rare and limited to a few sheets of paper and a few stamps.

Prisons will discard everything that an inmate has upon admission, even if it is unopened, and from another approved commissary, and the inmate must start over.

I do not know how juvenile canteen works or what is available.

Inmate commissary in this country is lucrative. Many internet articles talk about prison commissary profits.

Jail commissary is very limited. Prison commissary is not. Both venues are expensive, although the prison canteen is roughly equivalent to WalMart, at least for some items.

Here is an example of some prices. McCracken is a publicly owned jail; Ricky’s World is a private jail; KCIW is a state-run prison.

One soda McCracken: $1.40
The same soda Ricky’s World: $2.00
The same soda, state prison: $0.65

Suave shampoo 15 oz (think dollar store)
McCracken: $3.78
Fulton (Ricky’s World): $3.99
KCIW, prison: $2.25

I was not allowed to work in McCracken County jail, although I was a State inmate, Class D. Their reason at the time was that if female Class D inmates worked outside jobs, say, in the community, they would likely get pregnant. So, in McCracken, I received no state pay. The burden of commissary fell to my husband and my family. I wanted to be self supporting through my own contributions, but it simply was not allowed.

In Fulton, I earned sixty-three cents per day for full time kitchen work. Although the jail was private, it did receive funding for meals. We wore bar-coded bracelets. At each meal we were scanned.

Some women worked outside jobs at charities. They were required to take their noon meal at the charity, then return to the jail to be scanned, however, they were not allowed to eat the meal that they had been scanned for.

I made about $12.60 per month in the private jail. This did not even cover phone time, and so again, expenses fell to my husband and family and again, I wanted to be self-supporting through my own contributions but it was not possible.

In prison I earned twenty dollars a month for full-time work and then later, full-time school. I commend Kentucky for this: Once we made it to prison, if we took the initiative to attend school and remain in good standing, we were paid as if we were working. Still, twenty dollars a month is not enough to live on and so, again, the burden fell to my family and my husband.

Since there is no cooking or very limited cooking allowed in the jails, the jail commissary includes nothing fresh.

In prison, I would venture to guess that if inmates quit buying Ramen noodles, the economy would collapse. I saw some of the most creative meals I have ever seen in my life, made in microwaves, with Ramen noodles as a base.

As I write this, about two and one half million Americans are locked up, and their families are being raped by corporations for canteen funds.

What, then, does the bartering economy in prison look like? What are the acceptable forms of currency now that smoking is banned? Well, stamps are probably the closest thing to cash. Phone time, just about any food item is used, with coffee, sugar and creamer being very popular.

Some inmates draw pictures on envelopes and trade these for stamps and phone time, especially if the family on the outside is poor. Also, as I have mentioned before, many women trick write. They write to men or pen pals on the outside, and the men support them. Often the support is substantial.

Inmates carry no cash and there is a monthly limit to the money put on an inmate’s books.

I believe that when someone is locked up they should have the opportunity to work, and that the pay should be sufficient for the inmate to support herself. I also believe that the employer should be allowed to vouch or be a reference for the inmate’s work efforts, so that the inmate can support herself upon release.

This is not the case today.

Police lineup. World shut your mouth: