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.

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?

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.

Notes On The Dying Experience: Frog Gravy 24 [with jail art]

Turtle saying hello by Crane-Station on flickr. Jail art, colored pencil.

Bluebirds delivering mail, by Crane-Station on flickr. Jail art, colored pencil, magazine ink and ink.

The above drawings are from Fulton County Detention Center.

McCracken County jail banned pencils and art supplies of any kind.

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

Names have been changed.

Frog Gravy posts are also on Firedoglake.com in MyFDL in my diaries.

This post is from jail.

McCracken County Jail, Sometime in February, 2008, Cell 107

After Ruthie’s mother dies, I develop a fear that will stay with me for nearly the next two years. I fear that I will lose a parent, my son, my husband, or another loved one. None of my family members reside in this state, except for my husband.

During incarceration, I will see women lose parents, and also children, and I will watch in horror as a prison inmate is shackled and belly-chained and herded off to attend, for one-half hour, her son’s funeral- her teenage son, who drowned in an accident.

My mother’s sister is in fact very elderly and sick. I do not know how to help my mother with this from my vantage point, except to tell her what to expect. The dying experience is something that, for some reason or another, is avoided altogether in American culture. In my experience, many families were at a total loss at the bedside of a dying person, and many chose to leave the bedside altogether. I would always try to tell them, at the very least, that we believe hearing is intact until a person dies; hearing is the last thing to go, although of course, it is difficult to research this.

Here are my notes, and they may have come from a book or from memory:

1-3 months prior
-withdrawl from people and from world
-words less important than touch and physical presence, less verbal communication.
-decreased food intake.
-going inside of self.
-less communication.

1-2 weeks
-disorientation.
-agitation
-talking with the unseen.
-confusion.
-picking at clothes.

Physical:
-decreased blood pressure.
-pulse rapid or slow.
-skin color changes, pale, bluish.
-sleeping but responding.
-complaints of body tired and heavy…

Days or hours:

-intensification of the 1-2 week signs.
-surge of energy.
-decrease in blood pressure.
-eyes glassy, tearing, half open.
-restlessness.
-purplish knees, feet, hands.

Minutes:

-fish out of water breathing.
-cannot be awakened.

I try to talk openly with my mother, through letters, and educate her about the dying experience, and what to maybe expect in her sister’s case. My mother and I also exchange a few comments about our culture’s obsession with youth: unless you are young, and skinny, and getting laid, and making a lot of money, you are nothing.

It also occurs to me that I am psychologically and physically dying right here in this cement coffin, slowly, by inches and seconds. It is February, and I have not been out of the cell for any kind or rec since my arrival. Depression is crushing. I am babbling at times. I join others in showing my breasts to the men in the hallway.

Sometimes I wonder why the haters cannot just man up and kill us outright. But, I do not think they would enjoy that quite as much.

Author’s end note: My aunt died after my release, and, I was one of the lucky ones, in that I did not lose a family member during my incarceration. I was given, over and over, this advice: “You cannot live in here and out there at the same time.”

The Letter From My Son: Frog Gravy 21 [with jail art]

Saguaro, jail art with colored pencil and magazine ink by Crane-Station. Chosen today for Robert Alexander Dumas

Frog Gravy is a depiction of daily life during incarceration in Kentucky in 2008 and 2009, first in jails and then in prison, and is reconstructed from my notes.

Names have been changed.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

Frog Gravy posts are always originally posted at Firedoglake in MyFDL in my diary section. Please bear with me at this site. I am not very good with technology, so I am just figuring out what categories are. I am trying to sort posts accordingly. When I got out, for example, the cell phones were completely different.

Ricky’s World, Fulton County Detention Center, Hickman, KY, 9-14-08, just prior to the Presidential election.

When I found out about McCain’s running mate, I wrote a brief note to my son, and said, “WTF?”

His reply, as well as an update on what he is doing as I sit in Ricky’s World in Hickman, KY, is dated 9-14-08.

“Dear Mom,

“I must apologize for missing last week’s letter. I am still establishing an efficient study schedule, but if this letter stands for anything, it is for the fact that my plan is working. I managed to knock out all of next week’s reading this weekend. My friends and I came up with an apt description for the pressure of law school. It’s a bit like jogging in front of a slow moving steam roller. If you fall even remotely behind, it is a death sentence.”

“My plan is to do all of my reading on weekends while everybody else is partying. The problem is this: this week our professors laid it on a bit heavy. I think we totaled about 150 pages of reading on the week…a lot, but completely manageable. But we also have writing assignments. So, when everybody else is juggling writing assignments with the class reading the next morning, I will be able to address these writing projects free of any burdens. People will claim that pressure motivates them to work harder and more efficiently. That fact was true for me at certain points in college. The stakes are too high for that kind of pressure to be manageable. And anyway, I need the time to review black letter law books during the week.”

“My curriculum is a bit different than for standard 1Ls. I may have told you…I opted for an alternate curriculum that, to my knowledge, is only offered here at Georgetown. The curriculum is supposed to teach students not just the “what” of law, but also the “why.” We read cases and then supplement them with bits of history and philosophy. So far, the extra supplementary materials have given our readings a scholarly flair, but the one characteristic that I like most involves people. From what I understand, the curriculum attracts a more politically involved, open-minded student body…”

-snip-

“My roommate and I chose to take a few hours today and visit the Air and Space Museum. We had originally planned to see the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, but the Archives are closed on Sunday. Nonetheless, having seen, among other things, the first plane to propel the Wright brothers into history, the first plane to break the sound barrier, Sputnik, the Spirit of St. Louis, samples from the surface of the moon, Skylab, a lunar space module, a V-2 rocket, several space craft and aircraft of all shapes, sizes and speeds, I would hesitate to cal the day unsuccessful. Furthermore, none of the aforementioned was a replica. I was doubtful at first, and so I asked a museum attendant who assured me, that when I was looking at the Bell X-1 jet that propelled Chuck Yeager past Mach-1, I was in fact looking at the Bell X-1 jet that propelled Chuck Yeager past Mach-1.”

“I see you took notice of McCain’s running mate. All that can be said of her has been said in every venue aside from the media. In the first week after McCain announced his decision, the only thing I heard about Palin had to do with her pregnant daughter. It was maddening. Rather than take note of her spotty education and lack of experience, people seemed to be fixated on Palin’s views about her daughter’s decision to avoid an abortion. My roommate and I compared it to a situation in which an elephant lands in your living room, and everybody focuses on the fact that the elephant has a green toenail, while you stand screaming in the background that it’s a fucking elephant….aaaaaaahhh!!!”

“I listened to a radio talk show host who said that the decision was evidence of political aptitude on the part of McCain. Even in the insulation of a campaign he realizes he is losing this election. Rather than go the standard route and opt for Mitt Romney, essentially conceding defeat, he throws a hail Mary pass and picks Palin.”

“The thing that is so maddening about this situation is the fact that people cite one of her merits as involving the fact that people can relate to her….that she’s just another one of the crowd. People fail to understand that the qualities that entail good leadership naturally set people apart. We elect people because they stand out, because they presided over the editing of the Harvard Law Review and led a successful political campaign as a minority figure in a major metropolitan area and carried on their resume a whole host of other unique accomplishments…not because they had the wherewithal to drive their children to hockey practice each day like the rest of us. This election is not really about McCain anyway. He’s the “other guy.” The question in this election is whether we will elect Barack Obama or whether we will not elect Barack Obama…..I count myself fortunate enough to be in close proximity to the steps where he will take his oaths if elected.”

My son ends the letter with “Much Love.” A photograph is enclosed. I apply State-issue toothpaste, the universal jail house glue, to the back of the photograph, and stick it to the cement-block wall above my bunk. The television is airing Black Entertainment Television (BET) at maximum volume.

I return to the steel table and continue to work on a drawing, with magazine ink and commissary colored pencils that were manufactured in Indonesia by, I am fairly certain, people in an outsourced sweat shop who do not have the time or supplies to draw.