Cells are for holding things

This is a story about a cell. More specifically, this is a story about a series of cells that I went into…. but there are lots of different types of cells out there. 

Cells are for holding things. A container. A cubasa. They hold our sick and our ugly. The depravity, the violence, the despair…. when things get COMPLICATED. Cells make it so you don’t have to see these things, or interact with these things. They keep us safe from us. 

I have always had an exceptionally strong sense of smell, and taste, even still. In spite of the fact that I smoke like a chimney. I once had a dream of becoming a professional perfumer for one of the big houses. Or, getting that gig working for NASA where you have to smell everything which will be inside the space craft to make sure that it doesn’t smell….Because, I guess smells get really overwhelming in a sealed space craft.

I know the smell in Rita, (the Alameda County Jail). Sometimes I think I smell it in my waking life, passing like a ghost, a cold air. Sometimes, I don’t know where it’s coming from. Sometimes, I am passing through an abandoned building. Sometimes, an alleyway. Sometimes public transit. I’ve smelled it in drop-ins, homeless shelters, and old peoples homes. Its sort of like the smell of meals-on-wheels, but more sinister. Maybe it’s just a certain kind of sadness. Maybe it’s a smell like giving up? Maybe it’s a haunted celebration of that? Or, a ceremony for that? A ceremony of loss…. sometimes for fighting. Sometimes about letting go. Sometimes both….but it seeps from the cells of the desperate. I smell it in desperate places.

I think its something that sticks in all of us who have been there. It’s like it binds to   your nostrils and remains there in hiding until you are reminded…because you will be reminded. Because you must never forget. 

Never forget.

Maybe it’s the food? Round one is a moldy bologna sandwich. Stale white bread with green spectrum spores, yellow and blue, a thin layer of a substance that resembles white snot and a meat product. Maybe you get an orange.

That’s actually the better option. Once you are booked and dressed in, you get “hot food”, and that is where the smell comes from…some unidentifiable slop. Meat products on par with whatever gets used in dog kibble, accompanied by creamed corn, or frozen pees, or something like this. Not that I would bother to complain. It’s just an explanation of the situation, and the odor. The laundry detergent has a smell too, and the diapers they give you for menstrual pads, which are coated in so much scented powder that your labia becomes engorged and red with irritation when you use them…There are no tampons…There is probably some way to use them as a weapon or something. I mean, I guess you can just take them out and chuck them at people. That’s a weapon. 

So, it’s these smells mixed with the sweat and gas and the shit of detox. The vomit. Everyone’s different body response to everyone’s different interrupted dependency. Like the smell of human decay. Literally. How dead bodies smell in early stages. The crack and meth heads and their endless sleep farting. The heroin addicts, jealous of the sleeping. Hateful really. Sweating and puking and shitting themselves. The fear. The infections festering. The knowledge that we are still just in holding, the real shit hasn’t even begun yet. Mostly, there is a loud stillness. A heavy, heavy sadness. A regret. A wish that somehow things had gone different for us, and we hadn’t ended up here, A-Fucking-Gain. A fantasy of another life. A life where things have not come to this. I could have chose different. I asked for this. This was my lesson. The life I could have walked was softer, less disturbing, less disorienting, less …off….. But, instead I chose crack and heroin. I chose this cell. I asked for this.

And shit. Where is my dog? He was in the car when we got arrested. It was the reason all this happened. I tried to ask if I could take him when they impounded the car, thinking my record was clean. It should have been, but the computer records were out of date and in my “terms and conditions” I had a “stay-away” order from my closest friend and co parent of my dogs and co owner of my car. The woman with the traffic warrant. The woman being arrested. The computer says I am still on probation. He says I will be out by night, “if that’s true”. 

It is, but, I’m not.

My dog is in the pound, dog jail, the kill shelter, which smells like formaldehyde. Because all places of death smell like that. Different than places of despair. They are going to kill him if I don’t get someone to help me get him out. I once knew a kid who’s dog got taken to the pound when he got arrested and when he was released a couple days later and went to pick the dog up, they were walking him into the kill room. If he hadn’t seen them walking the dog into the back, if he hadn’t been there in that exact moment, the dog would have been killed. They gave him a non-chalant apology and explained they’d just mixed his dog up with another who had been there longer, and who was on the euthanization list for today. Another one of those clean, medical words which maybe makes the act easier to swallow. Oops. Sorry about that. 

But, that was my boy….  

Cowboy Dan wishes he could go back in time. Waits to die in his wet blanket regret.

The dog who drowned in the well.

And, hey, sorry about this….

Sorry, not sorry.

Sorry you’ve been arrested on false charges that you were in violation of your probation, (which has been closed and done with for at least 3 months, which is a miracle on its own, that you finished your probation). Sorry the computer system doesn’t get updated very often and so your arresting officer doesn’t know that. Sorry your friend dropped you off in a bus zone with a warrant for some traffic offense she can’t pay for because she is also poor and on heroin. Sorry you were living in your car and smoking crack and couldn’t let the last hit go. Sorry your priority was not loosing that hit, so much so you thought you’d get away, and that last hit would fix it, which led to your initial felony drugs charge in the first place. Sorry you feel sorry for yourself because if you were a black girl doing exactly what you did, your situation would be worse still. 

In jail, everyone knows that everyone’s life is slowly slipping away from them. That time will keep moving, but you will be frozen, in your container. The still. Your children, (they are usually harder than they should be), still want their mom. They tell you over the phone, they cannot find you in your container. You can do nothing, you can only listen, and hold the knowledge that the sooner they forget you, the easier it will be on them. You should stop calling. The listening is torture. You call your partner, your mom. Nobody can do anything and everyone is waiting. Everything is waiting. You wish you were dead…this place makes you want to die. You have to learn how not to be waiting. How to compartmentalize.

I had not learned yet.

Why did I get stuck in a cell with a phone? It taunts me, like a sick running joke. The outside world is only a dial tone away, but it is also a million pounds of cement and steel and bus rides, and courtroom appearances, and days and weeks or maybe months and years of time. Fucking time. A tease. A trick. Its like they put it in here just to fuck with me. A portal I can hear through but could never fit inside of. I call my mom to ask the time. How many days has it been? Is it light or dark outside? It is 746am.

I tell her I have been put in AD SEG because of a number 13 tattoo I got at Lucky Thirteen, when they give em out for free on Friday the 13th. I got it because I am both unlucky, and magic. It is on the back of my neck in bold black ink. They tell me they are afraid to let me into gen pop, (even though I’ve always gone to gen pop, they’ve only just noticed the tattoo). They say they are afraid either I will be jumped for holding a Sureno number, or jumped because I am obviously not a Sureno, (I am blonde and blue eyed and mostly Irish), but still carrying their number, their mark. I begged my booking officer not to. Begged him, crying and hysterical. Pathetic, really. I couldn’t be alone. Please don’t make me be alone. I told him I have anxiety and panic attacks and that I would lose my shit in there. As if they would care. I knew they wouldn’t care but I had to try...It’s probably the same reason a women begs not to be raped as her underwear is being yanked down to her feet. You have to try it. Maybe you can get them to sympathize with your humanity. What is the training? I could be your mom. I could be your daughter. Why are you doing this to me?

 I hadn’t done anything violent. I did not throw piss, or feces, or my bloody tampon at a deputy. I did not start a fight in here. Even in protective custody you still get to interact a little with the other inmates, but not here. This is a solo venture. This is really, truly, all the way alone.

In fact, I wasn’t even on the floor yet. 

There are only maybe 12 Women’s Administrative Segregation Cells at Santa Rita, the Alameda County Jail. All of them were full when I first arrived so they left me in a visitation cell. The cell with the phone. At the time you could not dial out to cell phones, only collect calls to landlines. The only person I knew who had one was my mom, which is why I was calling her. What time is it now?... It’s only been 2 hours baby.  I stopped calling her shortly after that. It seemed like it was hurting her more than it was helping me.

My second cell was barley long enough to lie down in, and had a stool right in the middle of it, so you had to pick one side or the other. There was a piece of bulletproof glass and then another identical room on the other side, which was always empty. The fluorescent lights never went off. There was neither a toilet nor a sink. I had to knock on the door and ask to use it. 

Because I am AD-SEG, I am dressed in reds. I am handcuffed and then shackled by a waistband to another set of shackles around my feet. I remain this way all the time. Even in my cell.

I am kicking 180mg of methadone and about a gram of dope. This is my daily. As it always goes, I hadn’t had the money for the clinic and hadn’t been in 3 days, just long enough for them to consider me no longer on methadone, and to avoid dosing me in jail. They no longer have any obligation to me…So, I am kicking. I am shackled to myself in a cement closet with the lights on, alone. I have to ask to use the bathroom, which usually takes about an hour before someone gets to me. So, I am just shitting myself, and puking so violently that when my body contorts and purges it empties everything. I am pissing myself when I vomit. I am wearing those horrible pads covered in their allergy producing powder to try to keep the urine from drying all over my thighs and giving me a rash there as well. It isn’t really working and instead the irritation is all over my vagina itself. It looks like I have a yeast infection. Maybe I do?

After about a week in there, they are moving me to an actual holding cell. Still not an AD-SEG cell, but this one at least has a toilet and a sink. The lights are still on all the time and the horrible air conditioning, which they blast on me from the ceilings even, and especially in the winter. I am freezing. I have never been so cold. I have a concrete bench on one side, which is large enough to sit on but too narrow to lie down on. They do that on purpose too. There are lice on the ground and you can see them, or crabs or something, some body parasite. There is enough room in here to lay a mattress down but since this isn’t meant to be a housing unit, they won’t give me one. 

I eventually give up on the too small bench and curl up on the parasite floor. I am still puking, shitting, and pissing myself with such sudden violence that I don’t always make it to the sink or the toilet. Maybe I have given up trying? There is a mote of body fluids all around me. I watch them as they wash up on the side of the wall when I move, the sticky slime that hangs for a minute before slowly rolling back into this ocean of filth. I have not eaten for days. I do not drink water. I do not want to eat or drink. I do not want to live. There is no soap and they will not bring me any, so it would be difficult to eat anyway, or wash any of this toxic waste off of me. I would infect myself. Also. I don’t even care at this point…. about any of it.

My body is revolting. My body wants to tear itself apart, limb by shackled limb. I want to tear my skin off with my teeth. I want to jerk off, because as the dope comes out there is also the awful ache of libido. It is how I imagine teenage boys to feel all the time, and I am sorry for them. Besides that, orgasm is the only thing I have control over in here to gift me a fleetingly brief reprieve. I know I am on camera. I know there is some creep in a room watching me unravel. Marveling at my lunacy, my deterioration. I touch my raw swollen pussy. I jerk off for so long and so hard that I injure myself there too. Like a fiend. I have been so thoroughly debased at this point that I don’t care whose watching. Let them see the broken ugly. Let them see me. There is a line in a Run the Jewels song that goes “just spit it disgusting youngin, and hold your nuts while your gunnin”. That is a more victorious version of me in this state, but the sentiment still rings true. I am this gross and disturbed…and Ima give you all of it. You hate me anyway. I am worthless anyway. This is the addiction coming out. The true spirit of it. What I’m willing to give up for a good feeling. Even for a second. A fiend. It isn’t that I am stigmatizing myself. Or, I’m not meaning to. Rather, I’m trying to illustrate the obsession of running. Running for real. Where you’d throw literally anything and anyone between yourself and that pain. 

When I cannot stand it anymore I begin to seriously contemplate suicide. Again. 

If I’m honest, I’ve probably been contemplating it since the moment of my arrest. Weak ass white people. Always looking for a way out. The quickest way out of any difficult situation is death….but how? I have no bra, no belt, and no shoelaces. I start to beat my head against the wall. How much pressure can I handle? How much pain? Is it better to deal with that pain than the other pain?

I do not know how long this will go on for. I should have seen a judge by now. A couple of times they took me to court. They gave me a big black trash bag and told me to hold it together on the bus or I wouldn’t get to go. I tried. So hard. If I never got in front of a judge, I’d never be released. Nobody knew what I was being charged with, or how to find me, to see me, to talk to me. My new cell did not have a phone. If they did violate my probation, I’d be looking at 3 years. I’m not sure how they’d successfully do that, but, I also know they can and will do whatever they want.

About half way to the courthouse I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I puked that horrible red box juice they give you with the castor oil in it. Mostly, I made it into the bag but it was kind of a projectile vomit and I’d also gotten it on the poorly looking girl sitting across from me with sickle cell anemia. She immediately puked in response and then a bunch of people started puking. We were on the freeway and the bus couldn’t pull over. It was summer in Oakland. Hot and stifling. The vomit was running up and down the floors of the bus as we careened across the freeway. People were screaming. The bus driver was screaming. More people were puking. After that they didn’t try to take me again for at least a week.

By then I’d been moved to actual AD-SEG. They finally gave me a shower and an actual cell, with a mattress. You had to walk past the other cells to get to the shower room and I remember everyone pressed against the plexi glass windows of their doors, wild eyed, and desperate. Immediately there were messages, letters, and weird pornographic art…can you give this to so and so in A3. In AD-SEG, there is only ever one cell open at a time there. You are not supposed to communicate with the other inmates. I had never been there. I didn’t know what the rules were but I wanted to help them. So I did. I took the letters and art and distributed them. Nobody seemed to notice. I didn’t get in trouble. This is where they put the crazy people. Think Crazy Eyes from that stupid book/TV show about the rich white girl who goes to prison. Crazy Eyes would have been in AD-SEG in real life.

I was there maybe another week before my friend who’d been arrested with me for the traffic warrant went and found the DA who had prosecuted my case, and the judge who had dropped the charges in my original case, after I completed the prop 36 program. It took them several more days to find me in there, but eventually I was discharged no charges filed.

I had to be carried, upon my release, by two gentlemen who had also been released, who were also trying to make the last BART train out of Dublin. I couldn’t walk. I was so weak I could hardly stand up. They put my arms over their shoulders and just lifted me out of there. In my shitty, filthy, stinking clothes they carried me. They were probably in there for selling dope, on the street I was a lowly “custi”, way below them in that power structure, but here they were helping me. They didn’t have to. They didn’t even know each other. All these people are just human at the end of the day. All of us just surviving, best we know how. At the bottom of everything are the caged. Not much separates us at that level. There is a comradery amongst us, a binding that connects us. The power they are so afraid of. Getting out of jail or prison is the best feeling in the world. Everyone is so thankful to be outside again, and in our overwhelming joy, we often become far more excepting of our differences. What we have in common seems to matter more.

 Maybe it’s a bit of a penance as well. An attempt at balancing the scales, do something generous for someone else. A defiant shriek at the blueprint for violence and oppression we have just been handed. Kindness. Empathy. Proof that we aren’t who they say we are. I saw you. I see you tonight. I refuse to forget. I say it louder.