one:  where I am

Sunday, July 27th
(first day of diary)

I suppose I should start by telling you where I am. This is an
old prison (well over a hundred years old) and it would be better
suited as a historical site, than a place to keep prisoners. It’s
falling apart. The state wanted to close it years ago because it
cost too much to operate, but they can’t, Even though they are
constantly building new prisons and adding to the ones they
already have, there are too many of us.

They have nowhere else to put us.

The massive Romanesque architecture of the prison’s
buildings, gun towers, and the thirty foot wall that surrounds us
is composed of worn red brick. Millions of them. The mortar that
has for so long held them together is falling out. In places, the
bricks have separated in distinct fault lines. Weeds have taken
root between them and sprout directly from the sides of buildings
and the wall. It’s a funny sight.

There is a contrast in the wall between the uppermost
section—which was replaced after it broke apart and toppled into
the big yard ten years ago during an earthquake—and the rest of
it which is covered with a dark, crusty type of moss. The contrast
is becoming less apparent though. Long streaks of rust from the
razor wire that crowns the top of the wall have stained the new
section and the moss is beginning to encroach.

I’m not as old as the prison (43 now) but there are times I
feel like it because prison is all that I know. I have been in since I
was eighteen. That is, if you don’t count the juvenile institutions I
spent my childhood in. Longer, if you do. Looking back it seems
like a long time. I’m conscious that I’m swiftly approaching the
limit of a prisoner’s life expectancy—which isn’t the same as that
of a free person’s.

two: proximity
Monday, July 28th

My celly, Bucky, began vomiting a few days ago. He’s in the
infirmary now with some kind of food poisoning. He isn’t the only
one who got it, so he has company.

I wouldn’t wish a sickness like that on anyone but, I have to
admit, his absence from the small place that is our cell is a bit of a
relief. I am less distracted, able to write more, and can get off my
bunk whenever I want, instead of the way we have to do it when
there are two of us…taking turns.

It isn’t that I don’t like Bucky, or care what happens to him. I
do. He came highly recommended (my friend Jimmy vouched for
him). After my last celly was transferred, the cell house sergeant
told me I would have to find another, or he would find one for
me. I had Bucky move in later that day.

Bucky came to prison as a juvenile with a four year sentence,
but in the few years he has been here six more have been added
to it because of his behavior (and I suspect he will stretch it to
more than that before he is through). He gets into trouble
because he’s afflicted with what used to be called in my time
“hyperactivity”, now ADHD. They give him Ritalin in an attempt to
control it, but he sells the pills. He has no other source of money
–no parents, he was raised by the state.

You may wonder why I choose to live with a prisoner like
Bucky, afflicted as he is and only nineteen years old. But, the
truth is, I am more comfortable around him than I would be
around someone who wasn’t sent to prison until he was older. I
have patience for Bucky because I understand him…at least the
circumstances that brought him to prison, because they are not
much different from the ones that brought me here when I was
his age.

I have to yell at Bucky sometimes to take a shower because
he forgets, or to wash his socks. But, besides that, he isn’t a
problem. He’s trustworthy and his word is good. What more
could I ask?

The problem isn’t my celly, it’s that this prison has the
smallest cells in the system—we literally live on top of each other
here. State officials know they aren’t supposed to put more than
one prisoner into a cell this small. An injunction was issued by a
Federal Court years ago that kept them from doing it—until the
state got it lifted by telling the court that prisoners were
volunteering to be crammed in together. Bastards.

I’ve pondered writing to the court to tell them the truth, but I
know it wouldn’t be wise. Others have tried it and everyone
knows what happened to them. Because of the overcrowding,
more than a thousand of our state’s prisoners are housed in
other states (long distances away), and I would quickly find
myself with them if I were to write the court.

Bucky is a decent celly, but I am going to enjoy this time while
he is gone. I don’t miss being forced into such close proximity
with anyone.

three: birds of a feather
Wednesday, July 30th

We were allowed out into the Big Yard this morning and I went
with the hope of catching sight of the young osprey that has been
hanging around the prison recently. Last week he landed on one
of the lights above the wall and I was able to get a good look at
him. He at me, as well.

No sight of the osprey today though. It was warm early and the
only birds to see were starlings, a small group in the grass on the
far side of the yard. They are always here because they don’t
migrate, the prison is their home. I have watched enough
generations of them live out their lives here, go from chicks to
death, to be able to tell you with certainty that they don’t go
anywhere.

I like to watch birds—which is strange when you consider that I
have spent many years of my life in IMU (maximum-security)
where I was unable to see them. There you are confined only to a
small cell, you don’t get to see outside. Then again, maybe it is
because of that experience that I have gained this appreciation for
them. I don’t think I had it before they put me in that place.

The starlings in the yard this morning were parents with their
offspring. Although the young ones were no smaller than the
adults, they were easy to pick out because of their coloring and
the way they behaved. While the adults search the grass for
food—thrusting their heads down into it and looking around, then
taking a few steps and repeating the process—their fledglings
follow them raising a ruckus, squawking and shaking their wings.
The only time the youngsters were quiet was when one of their
parents stuffed a bug in their throats. As soon as they got it
down, they would begin squawking again.

Sometimes when I am watching birds, thoughts come to me—
like the one I had this morning. As I watched the starlings, I
couldn’t’t help but recognize a correlation between them and a
certain kind of prisoner—those who were raised by the state in its
institutions. They, too, were brought up to be where they are.
Free people, I suspect, would think it ridiculous to say that, but
that is only because they don’t know what it is like—what growing
up in those places teaches you, and what it doesn’t. It doesn’t
prepare you for a life in civilized society. The only thing a young
person raised by the state is fit for is this right here. I’ve been in
long enough to see that cycle play itself out too, generation after
generation—I’m thinking of Bucky now, one of the most recent
generation.

Is it fair to write this? To believe it? My own generation comes
to mind now, those who grew up with me in those places. Yes, I
think it is fair…because I can’t think of a single instance where it
wasn’t true.

four: home
Thursday, July 31st

It is raining today. When we’re locked in our cells we can’t see
outside, but I know it is raining because water is running in
rivulets down the inner wall of the cell house, being absorbed into
state-issue blankets that have been laid out for this purpose. The
blankets must be changed frequently by the tier porters. Water
drips from cracks in the ceiling, the drops fall into large plastic
garbage barrels placed strategically on the cell house floor four
stories below.

It isn’t raining hard, if it was, more water would be coming
through the cracks. It’s funny to see streams of water pouring
from the ceiling (funny in the same way it is to see errant weeds
growing from the sides of old brick buildings here and on the wall).

I wonder how much longer this place is going to last. What if it
fell down? Wouldn’t that be funny? What would they do? Tell us
to go home? When you have lived your entire life in prison, where
is home?

five: fight
Saturday, August 2nd

There was a fight tonight during the last movement period.
(Movement periods are times during the day when we’re allowed
to move from one area of the prison to another.) Fights are
hardly unusual here, they happen all the time. I wouldn’t bother
mentioning it if there wasn’t more to it.

The fight broke out in the main corridor leading to our
cellhouse between two prisoners of different races and quickly
swelled to include more prisoners of those same races—six of one
and eight of the other. This kind of fight is more serious than
usual because it affects everyone in the prison, tautens the
already threaded line of tension that runs through everything
here, and carries with it the very real possibility that the entire
place will erupt into violence.

Alarms sounded, and the gates inside the prison that control
movement on its sidewalks and through its corridors slammed
shut, cutting off other prisoners’ ability to get to the disturbance.
Guards converged from every section of the prison.

I saw the fight from behind a wall of bars that separates one
end of the corridor from the other, part of a large crowd that was
caught there when the gates slammed. All of us watched as the
drama played out. One of the race groups involved in the fight
was my own and I was immediately conscious that there were
members of the other race in the crowd around me. I tallied the
numbers in my mind—theirs, ours— and shifted in the crowd,
moving closer to the others of my own race. I watched myself
doing this and realized what I was doing was automatic—having
done it so many times in the past, I didn’t have to think about it.
And I wasn’t alone, everyone in that crowd did what I did. The
races separated. I wonder at what point in a prison sentence that
a person becomes like this. Reaching into my memory as far as I
can…I can’t remember. I’ll have to ask someone newer.

We are in our cells now, locked in for the night. The cell block is
quiet, that’s  how you can tell something is going on. All it would
take is for someone to say something, to direct it out through the
bars of their cell into the quiet bock. Maybe not even that. It may
be already going to happen anyway. We’ll see what tomorrow
brings, when the cell doors are racked in the morning.

six: search
Monday, August 4th

I found my cell destroyed when I returned from the Big Yard this
morning. It was impossible to take it in all at once, so I stood at the
bars for some time looking in, trying to make sense of the mess,
assess the damage.

Everything was on the floor. The sheets and blankets that cover the
thin foam pads we call mattresses, stripped off and thrown there—
Bucky’s and mine. The cardboard boxes that I keep my property in had
been turned upside down and dumped there too. My heart froze at the
sight of my writing tablets in a twisted pile, loose pages scattered.

Anger came over me and I entered the cell. The door racked shut
behind me. Bucky’s property was dumped in the corner and his meager
collection of possessions were pushed under the toilet. The cover of my
favorite writing book was torn and I realized that it is as good as gone,
its useful life ended—not because the damage had destroyed it, but
because it is the reason guards will use to take it in the next cell search.
According to prison policy, it is now “altered.” No matter that they did it.

When I picked up the writing tablets, I noticed that my photos were
under everything, strewn across the concrete floor face down. I
dropped the tablets and hurried to pick them up. Some lay in water and
there was no way I could salvage them.

It would have been easy at that point to tell myself it was the last
straw, to self-destruct. It was what I wanted more than anything to do.

The photos were of Kriss—of Kriss and me together. Kriss, who has
visited me for the last fifteen years, who sacrificed so much in her life in
order to befriend me, then more in order to marry me. She has been
with me through the hardest times and is the only family I have ever
known. Do they not know that I love this woman more than life itself?
My anger turned red-hot; my hatred of them, implacable.

I reminded myself that the photos aren’t her, they’re just photos.
She doesn’t want me to self-destruct and end up in the hole. I tried to
imagine her here, what she would say. A shadow passed in front of the
cell and I looked up to see a guard standing there. He looked young and
a bit nervous. I stared at him with the blank cast of my prison face, not
saying anything. I didn’t know why he had come to my cell (to witness
firsthand the misery he had caused and revel in it?) I remember exactly
what I thought at that moment, “It’s too soon…I haven’t composed
myself yet…I’m not ready to hear what you have to say…get out of here
and leave me alone!”

The guard smiled in an attempt to appear friendly, to bridge the
gulf. He offered an offhand apology for the mess and informed me that
it wasn’t their fault (he and the others guards who did it), the order to
search the cell had been handed down “from above.” He looked at me
as though he expected me to say something.

I held on to my deadpan expression—as much a part of me as it is, I
had difficulty maintaining it. I told him quietly to leave.

The guard began to say something, but I didn’t give him the chance.
I yelled, ”LEAVE!” imbuing the word with all of the anger that I felt, no
longer interested in concealing it. It was as civil a tone as I could
manage, His expression turned angry instantly, his lips compressed into
a tight resentful line and he moved off.

For a moment, I tried to look at things from the young guard’s
point of view, but it was useless. There is no way I could understand a
guard like that, how he and his buddies could possibly think that it was
okay to do this, and that he would be able to come by the cell afterward
and explain away what they had done, that I would be okay with it and
everything would be all right—or, at least, no different than before they
did it.

I sat down heavily atop the wreckage of my property, no longer
interested in trying to sort through them or pick things up, the photos
of Kriss still in my hands. I counseled myself—as I have done countless
times in the past—that I don’t really own anything…photos or anything
else. No one does here. What you have in regard to property, you only
have through good fortune, and only for the time being, there is no
guarantee you will be able to retain it. If you lash yourself to it—what
you think is yours—prison will break you. Anything you have in here can
be taken or destroyed on the whim of those who keep you, and the
more you cling to it, the more likely it is to happen.

Breathing deep, I allowed my thoughts to settle and reminded
myself of the source of my strength, My strength lies in the knowledge
that guards can take everything from me, strip me naked and throw me
into a concrete and steel cell with nothing, leave me there an indefinite
period of time (months or years) and I will find a way to survive, to
come out of it sane and still a functional human being with the ability to
start anew. I know this because they have done it, and I have made it
through…many times. It is these times that are my greatest victories.

The only thing we truly own in prison is what we possess when we
are naked…locked inside of a cell with nothing. If a person can figure out
what that is and cultivate it, abide in it, what they take from him
materially means nothing, that is when he is doing time right. If you’re
unaware of what you have to fall back on when you’ve been stripped of
everything…then you truly are poor.

I feel better now. I realize I only get upset because I forget, lose
touch with what I already know, the source of my strength. When I’m in
touch, none of this is able to bother me…and I don’t feel the need to hate anymore.

seven: fat jack
Tuesday, August 5th

They transferred Fat Jack to the infirmary today. I was glad I got the
chance to see him before he left, but it was difficult watching him go. I
have known him a long time and he really is a decent person.

It’s funny that I still call him Fat Jack even though he isn’t fat
anymore and hasn’t been for some time. His belly protrudes, but that is
only because his organs are distended, painfully bloated with the toxins
his liver is unable to filter from his blood. The rest of him is skeleton-
like, the flesh that remains hangs loosely from his bones. He is in the
latter stages of Hepatitis C infection.

Jack’s transfer isn’t a surprise, he knew it was coming. It’s inevitable
when you lose touch with who and where you are—when you ask
guards questions that don’t make sense and wander unconsciously into
sections of the prison you aren’t supposed to go. We have both seen it
before (infirmary staff say that the prison HVC infection rate is over
seventy percent), most recently with some of Jack’s closest friends:
Chuck, Leo, Speedy…Bill.

Jack took Bill’s death the hardest. Bill, who spoke of being betrayed
before his transfer to the infirmary. He passed most of his sentence
working as a clerk in the chapel, certain that Jesus would get him out of
prison one day. “Faith” he called it. As it turned out, it was nothing
more than overconfidence in Jesus’ ability to influence the affairs of the
Department of Corrections. Bill died within days of his move out of the
cell house and Jack has made a point of declaring his own position on
Jesus ever since. Even when he is in one of his delusional states, his
position doesn’t change—there is no Jesus.

For me, what the state is doing to Fat Jack throws into question
their assertion that their prisons only house those who are too
dangerous to allow into society. After all, Jack can hardly get around
anymore—he was sent to prison for drug offenses. What would it hurt
to cut his sentence and let him die outside these walls? Wouldn’t that
be the right thing to do? Every terminally ill prisoner I have known
asked for this, but I’ve never seen it granted.

It was hard to watch Jack make that walk today. I tried to lighten his
mood by telling him that Bucky (my celly) is in the infirmary…that he will
see him there…but my words sounded phony because they didn’t match
what was in my heart. I wish that I could have thought of something
more meaningful to say. Jack seemed unusually clearheaded. Watching
him trudge off down the walk in the direction of Medical, I believe he
knew this would be the last time he was going to make that trip.

eight: about education
Thursday, August 7th

Everything stopped while I was reading a newspaper in
the library today—the article said that Alexander
Solzhenitsyn passed away in his home in Moscow. The rest
of the world continued on, I suppose, but everything
stopped inside of me. I retreated to my cell and remain here
in order to contemplate his life, and the connection I have
for so long felt with him. I realize you may not understand—
why Mr. Solzhenitsyn meant anything to me, why the news
of his death affects me. Let me try to explain.

When I was sent to prison many years ago as a very
young man, I had only a seventh grade education and didn’t
read or write very well. I had never heard of Mr.
Solzhenitsyn. I wanted to go to school and get an
education, which was something that was not available to
me before I came to prison, but I soon discovered I wasn’t
allowed to attend school inside either. Prison officials said it
would be a waste of their time and resources to educate me
because I had a life sentence. They told me I would only be
allowed to take barber or janitor classes—two vocations that
would make me a useful prisoner.

At this point, I didn’t even know if it was possible for me
to learn—if I had the same abilities as others—but I had
made up my mind to try, so I set out to educate myself. I
went to the prison library and began to check out books. It
was a small library and poorly stocked, but I read everything
I could…biography, history, philosophy, language. Then I
made tests and gave them to myself in order to be sure I
had retained all that I was pouring into my mind.

On the back shelf of the library one day I came across a
treasure—a three volume set of Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag
Archipelago. When I got it back to my cell, it held me
entranced long after I finished it.

I went on to read all of Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s published
works. My favorite is a small book entitled One Day in the
Life of Ivan Denisovich—the story of a day in the life of a
prisoner in the Soviet Union. I love that book, not only
because it reflects the strength and perseverance of the
human spirit in the face of seeming hopelessness but,
because it could have only been written by a prisoner…only a
prisoner can know of so many of the things he wrote. In
fact the book startled me when I read it because I knew it
was written about prisoners in another country, during a
different time, under different circumstances, yet I felt as if I
was reading about prisoners and guards I know, what goes
on here, and what goes through many of our minds while
we’re experiencing it. There were so many parallels, I couldn’t
help but feel close to them. Of course, I am conscious that
Ivan and many of those in prison around him were political
prisoners, and I and those around me are criminals, but
there is still a connection…and that connection is that we are
human beings.

The experience of prison as it exists in our country today
is no less damaging to the individual or society than the
experience of it that Mr. Solzhenitsyn wrote about. There
are many differences, but it is no less harmful and those
who would believe otherwise are deluding themselves;
certainly they have never been prisoners. The only argument
to be made is whether or not (because of the harm many of
us have caused others) we deserve it, and if the price of
doing this to so many of us is worth the toll it takes upon
society. I’ve often wondered what Mr. Solzhenitsyn would
think (write) if he were able to experience what it is like to
be a long-term prisoner in this country today where prison
has become an industry into which human beings are fed,
and out of which is spat a product that is much less capable
of functioning in society than the one that went in.

Being in prison in this country is different now than it ever
has been before. There are more people inside—many times
more. Never has there been anywhere close to this number.

And sentences are longer and harsher than ever. Is that
because people are worse today than they were in the past?
Worth less? Less able to redeem themselves, or less
deserving of the opportunity to do so?

And young people—the ones with the greatest potential
to reform themselves—are given those sentences. We have
prisoners in this state who were given mandatory Life
without the Possibility of Parole sentences when they were
thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen years old. We have prisoners
struck-out as career criminals when they were nineteen,
twenty, and twenty-one. They too have mandatory Life
without Parole sentences. “Mandatory” means that a judge
didn’t have a choice in the matter, the sentence was
mandated by legislators (lawmakers who decided without
ever meeting these young people or considering their
circumstances, that there is nothing in them worth
salvaging, that they can never change, and that they
deserve nothing ever other than unremitting punishment.

Maybe I am deluding myself, but I have always felt that
Mr. Solzhenitsyn would be able to relate to what is going on
here with many prisoners…feel as close to us as I have
always felt to him. Getting a sentence of Life without Parole
when you are young is hopelessness. Continuing on after
that, learning to survive in an American prison and proceed
forward as decades stack one atop another, and you have
long since forgotten what is on the other side of these
walls, is perseverance of human spirit.

Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s writing inspired me as a young prisoner
to continue my efforts to educate myself and, eventually, led
me to write a book modeled after his One Day in the Life of
Ivan Denisovich. It’s a manuscript that is passed from
convict to convict; the story of one day in the life of a
prisoner inside the prison in which I grew into adulthood and
have spent most of my life—the prison in Walla Walla. When
officials there discovered a copy and read it, they threw me
in the hole and revoked my medium-custody classification.
But the manuscript still makes its rounds. Prisoners read it
because it puts words to what they are unable to, relates
the truth about prison, and what it does to those who are
in it. I have always felt that Mr. Solzhenitsyn is as
responsible for the existence of this convict manuscript as I
am.

I wonder if Mr. Solzhenitsyn ever dreamed while he was in
prison that his life would turn out as it has…that he would
live outlive the system that imprisoned him… that he would
one day live free…that he would own a home (in Moscow)
and that he would be able to die there. Perseverance of
spirit. Thank you Mr. Solzhenitsyn for showing us what that
is. No better example could have been given, no better life
lived.

nine: crowded
Friday, August 8th

Bucky was released from the infirmary today around noon. He
surprised me when he showed up at the cell haggard and pale,
hunched over because his stomach still hurt. He said that he had
seen Fat Jack.

Part of me is glad that he is back. Tomorrow, if he is up to it, we
will play chess. He likes getting beat.

I am trying to suppress the other part of me—the part that
doesn’t like to be crowded.

ten: a river of faces
Tuesday, August 12th

My friend, Kenny, got out of prison yesterday. He felt bad
about leaving, I could tell. Not bad that he was getting out, but
that I’m not.

It’s a kind of guilt that I don’t understand. He wanted me to
say something, I know, to allay what he was feeling. But I didn’t.
It’s not my fault what he feels.

Kenny is a decent person, but he cannot fathom the endless
line of people I have seen get out in the last twenty-five years, a
river of faces almost as large the one I have watched flow in. And
he is only one ripple in that river. I didn’t want to try and explain
that to him. Better that he just went…thinking what he thought,
feeling what he felt.

Never do I mouth the same tired platitudes I hear from
others—“Good luck…” “I hope you make it…” “It’s been good to
know you…” etc. I can’t bring myself to do it. Only in the last few
years have I become aware of what I say—“See you later…” Maybe
that is what I am hoping for. And…why not. The odds are it’s
true. Am I supposed to feel bad when they come back? You think
I want to be alone in here? Or surrounded only by those I don’t
like?

I realize it’s a fucked up way to think. I’m working on it.

Eleven: The Sting
Thursday, August 14th<

An unusual sight on the Big Yard today—two gold finches. I
heard them and looked up in time to see them flit over. That was
it, only a second or two worth of sighting, but enough to be sure
of what they were.

The young starlings were more independent than last time I
observed them—they have ceased to bother their parents so
much. All that differentiates them from adults now is their
coloring.

I’m not sure what made me think of it, but as I watched the
birds it occurred to me that prison is harder on people who were
sent here when they are older. At least, those who are older than
twenty-one. When you’re sent to prison younger than that, there
comes a point when it loses its sting, you lose touch with the fact
that you are being punished. This is true especially if you have a
life sentence because when you live your entire adult life in prison,
no matter how bad it gets in here, your situation is only what
you, as an adult, have ever known it to be. You go about life the
best you can without the handicap of memories of a better time
or place (unless it’s memories of a better prison you were in
once, compared to the one you are in now).

After living so long here I’m conscious that prison is
punishment only because of what I see on the faces of those not
yet accustomed to it. Watching the newly arrived, it’s obvious
that what they find in here isn’t what they are used to, not what
is considered normal outside these walls…undoubtedly a long way
from it. Their reaction infuses itself on their faces, a dawning look
of horror; realization that they now have to live like this, will have
to find a way to do it…or knot a sheet around their neck. They
don’t know the half of it yet.

Even as I write this I’m aware that it isn’t completely true, I’m
not entirely unbothered by prison, the experience of life here isn’t
bereft of punishment for me. That is because I’m not blameless. I
am responsible for the death of an innocent person, that is why I
am here. And it eats at me…always has. What bothers me is that
I don’t feel like I’ve ever been able to pay anything back, in any
way make up for the crime I as an ignorant young person
committed—no matter what happens in here, no matter how bad
or intolerable it gets, prison has never made me feel like I am
doing that.

Arthur Longworth has been incarcerated since age 18. His youth was spent in a variety of foster homes – usually for only two or three months at a time. He was separated from his sister at an early age and, in his teens, he lived in a series of youth facilities. At sixteen he was released to the streets with no means of support. He had only a seventh-grade education and began life in Seattle breaking into cars and doing petty criminal activity. At age 18 he escalated to armed robbery and in one holdup a victim was killed. Arthur was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole.  After Longworth arrived in prison he asked to go to school to get an education. He was told that as a “lifer” he wouldn’t need an education. Eventually he visited the library and educated himself.

“Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved.  You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?”  ~Alice Walker, The Color Purple

Thick rim lenses magnify Mary’s eyes to alien size but crossed, each one stuck to its own stubborn tear duct. Mary tells the same stories she has told over and over again since I can remember, which always gave me plenty excuse to stare at her affliction.  I can’t figure out how it is that ugly-old-Mary could manage to drive the Blue and Gray Highway from Fredericksburg to our house in Virginia where the breakfast nook parquet floor pattern was all but invisible to her.  I know this to be fact because whenever Aunt Mary cackled near the end of her favorite retelling-that day barefooted Memaw and Willie Pearl, prim and pinafored like proper little southern girls, climb a split rail fence and hop on a spit-tempered sway-back plow horse that don’t move no matter how hard you kick him-I always looked down at the floor before Mary finished her good laugh and tried to get me to talk, asking that question, “What in the world are you looking at child?”

I see the pattern even now, but never understood exactly how parquet basket weave fits together.  And I never got too far counting the number of wood tiles in that room without landing on Mary’s black tie-up shoes slipped off, the knee-high stockings fallen around lumpy ankles, looped above gnarled black edge toenails wiggling through those nylon holes just outside her open shoes’ dry gag-that’s where I always ended up getting lost and having to start counting floor tiles over again.  So I never figured out the answer to Mary’s question and couldn’t have spoken it out loud in any case.

All the Lee women had in common a hatred of shoes and a craving for cigarette chat, which maybe explained why I never could abide showstopper myself, and definitely became the reason I stored a wad of bubble gum on the arch of my right foot when I went to bed each night or when I went down to the river to fish or sneaked away to wherever I might find time alone since chewing gum was hard to come by and I found it a safe guard against being expected to talk or smoke.  If I kept the gum anywhere else, there was always the chance someone might take it and throw it away.  Once I accumulated a huge glob from several weeks’ little league games.  The kids with parents only wanted the baseball cards and tossed the paper and gum to the trash barrel, the dugout dust, or the first base-line fence. That’s
where I stood to wait for gum and to watch my brother’s friend Jackie Nichols pitch.

Jackie was a beautiful starling-haired boy who collected baseball cards but chewed the tobacco Michael pocketed for him in the 7-11.  Whenever Jackie bent down to tighten his cleats, the blue stripes over his thigh muscles stretched into wide waves.  The last time I saw Jackie, he selected as always two heavy bats instead of one to warm up his swing. Jackie tossed aside his packet of unwanted gum and watched me reach through the fence. He always hit a homerun and always cracked the bat and Jackie had never struck out before that day, so I said afterwards it was just more bad luck, the wild pitch he threw that struck directly where I leaned my forehad against the fence. He was the first boy I ever loved, and I cried when I wasn’t allowed to go to the baseball field again. Two weeks later Jackie shot his mama point blank and a couple years after that I heard he got himself beat to death in Pawtuxent.  Everyone said it was a damn shame.  He was the best pitcher we ever had.  But nobody, not even Aunt Mary who knew everything about anybody, ever found out what happened to Michael.

But I can’t talk about that yet.  I was thinking about shoes when the storm began that flooded the basement with four feet of sewage, tipping over and soaking the contents of a very few boxes that stored what we found left for us two addresses ago at that house on the lake where John and his sister loaded up trucks filled with everything from beds to silverware and clothes, all of which they sold at the Avon flea market the day I took the kids to their yearly physical and called a friend from the Henrietta WalMart after the engine in our van blew up and we climbed the rock erosion wall from the highway up to the shopping center lot.

As the storm set in, I carried the oldest box upstairs for safekeeping.  Inside I found stray black and white photos I remembered snatching up from the basement floor of the lake house.  No one smiles for the camera.  Mary and Mama with new permanent waved hair, red painted nails on my mother’s hand swirled around a glass held up for a cheers at Bettie’s Christmas Eve party.  A girl dressed in a flannel nightgown, her hair wrapped into bobby pin-curls tight against her scalp. Two boys:  one crouched low, wearing a catcher’s mask, chest and knee pads, holding out a mitt, and the other standing next to him, double bats perched across the back of his neck with his arms dangled over the bat ends.  There’s a beagle puppy asleep in a blanket.  Michael named the puppy Happy.  I remember the day Michael stood next to me stiff-backed against a cinder block wall, watching our Master Sergeant father beat the puppy silent with the butt of his sniper rifle.  That day at the lake house, on the picture window sill, I sorted and set out the photos and pairs-sizes zero to six boy and girl swaddling, walking and t-ball shoes.  I guess no one thought the contents of this left behind box to be worth anything.

So I should have seen this last storm coming.   It was far too warm to be October.  One week before I brought up the box on the night that heaviest snow in a century would fall on trees still in leaf, I sat braked at a green light and watched through my windshield as a woman wearing a quilted winter jacket over a white slip stopped traffic, darted between cars, stumbled at the curb, and ran bloody-kneed back and forth across the Albright-Knox Art Museum lawn.  I pulled over and got out of the car.  When I reached her she had fallen hard on a walkway but her legs were still moving. “They won’t let me stop,” she said, trying to catch hold of either the mismatched yellow golash or the fake fur boot. The forearm she lifted bent awkward, broken at its center.  Wide uniform shoulders pushed in front of me, rolled the woman on her side and clipped her wrists together with what looked like a plastic trash bag tie.  The officer didn’t seem to notice the fractured arm.  Police lights colored the woman’s bleach-orange hair and black roots into dark and light shades of flashing blue and the woman started to wail in a pitch akin to the cry of an infant, so I walked quietly to my car and drove home to make dinner, either tuna fish or egg salad sandwiches.  I couldn’t decide.  She looked an awful lot like my mother.

Then there were those empty desert boots.  I had saved just enough money that
week to buy a decent pair of shoes.   The ones I wore were at least four years old and the
right shoe had holes not just on the sole but wearing through the toe, which didn’t bother me at all but embarrassed my son.  Store after store window inside the shopping mall I couldn’t spot any shoes I might like and my daughter wasn’t there to tie them even if I could find a pair.  I never was good at that, and usually settled for knots.  For a while I stood outside a boutique window filled with fancy high heels hooked into a net strung with starfish and glass prisms that hung sparkled and zirconia clear like the wedding shoes mama left in the back of her closet.  After an hour or so, I made my way back to the escalator that led to the entrance marked on the mall map pamphlet I tucked into my back pocket when I arrived.  The desert boots stood alone at the top of the escalator, well worn and unlaced but neatly placed together just to the left of where people step off.  I sat down on a concrete bench and tried to reason why no one else stopped or even gave the boots a second glance.  Michael wore his boots with such pride.  I wondered if on the night Michael gave up asking for help from the Tampa V.A. hospital, he had placed his own Desert Storm pair neatly aside the same way these boots rested at ease, before he pillowed his head on a cement curb on that street somewhere in Florida along the early morning postal route.  I don’t know where they buried the body.

I understand now that the snow sneaked up on us but the trees I’m sure were not
surprised.  When the power went off, we stepped outside bundled in our two blankets apiece.  Limbs cracked and fell, drumming asphalt block to block.  Some branches arrowed shrubs and windows.  The ones that began life as sibling saplings and had grown together through two world wars into gigantic oaks-split apart, their weight yanking telephone wire and cable loose or altogether torn from the poles.  The sky lit sudden neon gas and electric blue.  Two houses down, street transformers blew glass sparks into stars.  We stood unmoving.  They are old enough now, I thought, looking to each side and up at the beautiful profiles silhouetted on white-out wind, each one of my children grown to a height that measured at least a head taller than me.

Some time in the night the oldest tree on Garrison Road sent spears through the roof above where we slept by the fire, right through the sound.  In the morning we found our house starkly cold and our street a shipwreck.  I borrowed a neighbor’s phone.  Most of the people here are elderly so we dug them out first and cleared away what trees we could lift and carry to the boulevard.  It was a good thing I did not buy shoes but I knew we were in more trouble than that small amount of money could fix, and I suffered a terrible ache when I came inside to sit by the fireplace my son lit and I peeled away wet socks to find my feet lifeless pale.  I remembered the memorial for my mother when Aunt Mary told me that one story I had never heard before.

She confessed that Christmas was a bad day for her ever since before she and
mama were old enough to go to bible school, where there was always soup.  Memaw made their Sunday dresses from flour sacks stitched together in diamond patches Mary thought looked pretty until she got glasses from preacher.  One December, Memaw had set aside enough coins to buy a baby doll with wooden feet and hands and head, its hair eyes and lips painted on.  It was meant for the six sisters to share, maybe to help acquaint them with the idea of another new baby, since they were all a bit older by then and the last three in line were called to be angels just after they were born.  A month before Christmas, Willie Pearl sent a letter and newspaper clip of their mother in a silk lined coffin.  Memaw was never welcome home even for her own mother’s funeral ever since she had married one of them Cherokee Joneses.  Mary said Memaw showed her the old woman picture and told her you know when something is dead if it has that newspaper color skin. On Christmas Eve, Mary sneaked into the bed between Memaw and Papaw so she could touch the new baby.  He was cold.  Mary’s crying woke Memaw, who quietly stripped the new doll and put its white dress on the infant while Papaw went out to the shed to saw floorboards into a box he nailed together.  They wrote his name in script with a brush dipped in navy blue porch paint-Ezekial-Mary finally remembered, on the inside of the lid. That was the last story Aunt Mary ever told me.  She calls sometimes, but I never pick up the phone.  I can’t say why, exactly.  But mostly, I don’t think she has a right to call.  Aunt Mary wasn’t blind.  She could see far off things better than most.  Michael was rough and heavy.  Mary could have done something on one of her Sunday visits all those years ago.  She must have known.  There is always a choice within whatever befalls.

When my feet warmed up past numb, I knew we were trapped in our own house, and it was several days before help arrived.  The Red Cross finally answered my call from the borrowed phone, delivering emergency food and supplies door to door.  I was glad to hear they helped some people clear trees and tarp roofs.  They probably skipped my house because there was no way clear from the road to the door and the kids were not looking out but sleeping, exhausted from helping the day before.  I was dumping water from the last box dragged up the basement stairs when I saw the disaster relief truck move away from the end of our street.  I had never heard a siren like that.  I sat down on the box and the cardboard collapsed into water and muck atop three feet of snow.

All around me trees silently began planning either death or amputated persistence.
Few remained whole.  I suppose there are parts of ourselves we must give up in order to make room for the young, embracing loss with whatever is left of our reach, refusing to pass down what is already half pest and half fungi eaten.  Maybe that unwanted wisdom turned my own mama into a flat broken thing short-sheeted on a detox ward bed.  First cold and pale, then ashes inside an urn I never laid eyes on since I couldn’t go to her funeral.

Mama and Michael, wherever they are, would have made better angels.

They never have to count or wear shoes or break.  They don’t have to wade through basement sewage or pretend they are not hungry.

Angels don’t have to choose.

Eliza Kelley teaches Poetry, Fiction, Memoir, Nature Writing, American Indian Literatures, Human Rights Discourse and American Minority Literature at Buffalo State College in New York. Her work has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies such as Common Sense 2, Absinthe Literary Review, Facets, Literary Potpourri, Antietam Review, Square Lake, Pedestal Magazine, “The Kali Guide,” Icarus International, “The Anthology of New England Writers,” and “Red White and Blues: Poetic Vistas on the Promise of America.”

The tiny gap between his prominent front teeth and his curiously alliterative name seemed to indicate that Earl’s squirrel trapping profession might have been pre-ordained. His detailed description of a humane removal plan for the squirrels that were tearing holes through my ceiling further convinced me that he had found his niche, or vice versa. The idea of humanely catching the squirrels appealed to me. I like squirrels. But when they became squatters and inhabited my nighttime silence with scratching and mating sounds and eventually poked their groping paws through to my bedroom, I needed Earl.

His plan was to set traps throughout the yard, and over a period of a week to catch the five or six squirrels he imagined were nesting in that corner of the old Victorian home where I lived in the Bronx. As part of his professional inventory, Earl brought cases of chunky Peter Pan from a bodega in Queens, claiming the generic brands didn’t hold the squirrels’ interest. His Havahart cages had long ago lost their factory sheen, so there was no need for camouflage. Earl assured me that they worked best when they were a little ragged and rusty.

“They might be ugly,” he said, “but they are disinfected with Clorox after every catch. To stop the spread of diseases.”

Earl placed two old and ugly but germ-free traps around my yard and left a Peter Pan trail that led to the sensitive triggers. He hoped that in the chill and hungry New York winter, my emboldened squirrels would run headlong into their Havaharts, nibbling contentedly on the chunks of nut not found in generic brand bait.

“You got some fine cats there. Better keep ‘em inside during the trapping period. Catch me lotsa cats when I set traps for possums, ‘cause then I use smoked fish. But a hungry cat might like peanut butter just as good — and every cat stuck in that cage is another squirrel I have to reset for. Caught the same gray tabby four times at a house in Yonkers. A stray. And they say cats are smart? I guess there’s no accountin’ for hunger. But the guy wouldn’t pay me for removing a stray cat, even if it was a nuisance to ‘im. And I don’t give no free rides to Westchester.”

Earl took his catch up to a few different wooded areas in Westchester County, and let them go into the relative wilds. I asked him if he thought of leaving squirrels at other homes and sticking his business card in the mailbox. He flashed his gapped grin and snapped his fingers.

“If I ever need an agent I know where to come!”

Westchester County’s squirrel population must be growing at a good clip. Earl caught seven at my house in a week.

Sometimes it’s the smallest things that stir the memory.

I suppose I should have been happy that Earl’s plan was working. On the first day, just as I was leaving for work, I checked the two traps. I saw one black squirrel with nut-brown eyes, quiet and tensed inside. Another gray-brown one was wild with desperation. In both, I saw deception, accusation and fury aimed at that steel door that blocked their return to my ceiling or wherever they had once called home. Little paws gripped the metal bars of the cage as they sniffed the air for any sign of change.

I stood very still and watched. I remembered prison, looking through barbed wires at the mountains around me, knowing there was music out there. And I couldn’t get to it. I remembered the scent of my wool blankets. My bed. From the floor of the Mexican prison where I slept fitfully for 33 nights, I recalled sunlight making lacy patterns on the ground under my jacaranda tree. Like these squirrels, I was uncertain of how that steel door had snapped closed behind me, and more uncertain of when or how it would open again. With great effort I distilled myself to essentials, trying to save the delicate parts of me from the harsh realities of imprisonment. I tried to make myself small and hard, so I could slip through unnoticed. I remembered the other women’s nut-brown eyes, sometimes wild, other times wide and calm. I remembered the women in prison and the many traps that had caught them by the leg, not so humanely as Earl’s. I thought of the metamorphosis of captivity. How a cage, austere and corroded, is the entire world for a moment. And then it opens to Westchester. And it might as well be Jupiter. And you might as well be a squirrel, for all the familiarity you feel with the way you look now. With the way you react to the new freedom around you. With the way to find home. You sniff the air for any sign of familiarity, but there is none.The new freedom I found on release was dotted with prisons I hadn’t noticed before. Dependence, insecurity, doubt. “There’s no accountin’ for hunger,” Earl would have said. I followed dozens of nut-studded trails to dead ends while picking my way home.

That morning, I don’t remember if it was cold, or if I was breathing. All I could see were the traps. Sometimes it’s the smallest things that stir the memory. And sometimes nothing has to stir it – it is just there. I see their faces still. Full lipped, heavy lidded, high cheeked, drawn, vibrant, painted, wan, changeable faces. I see them on the streets of New York. There is Bertha reading The Wall Street Journal balancing on the A train. And Maritza gave up crack and is selling chocolates wrapped in colorful foil, shaped like bunnies for Easter. That woman walking her baby in Central Park looks like Fátima, but her baby would be bigger now. These are not the women I knew in prison. I want to ask these women: “Can you possibly imagine what it’s like not to have a choice? To wake each day and know exactly what is waiting for you? To feel minuscule and helpless against something you cannot control?” But I am afraid. I am afraid they will say “Yes. I know.”

There are so many prisons. Some we just wander into unaware.

I can tell you about a prison I knew once. About a woman who slept underneath a bed and a woman who stomped a rat to death with her foot. About a drug runner turned playwright and a Zapotec woman who could teach God about dignity. About women so hungry for crack they would sell a half-eaten sandwich for a dime, and women hungry for a choice, for retribution, for a voice. I could tell you about this prison and these women and their walls and the wisp of their lives that curled around my own. I would tell their stories to cut a hole in the mesh, to help them escape… or to help me escape.

The black squirrel made a scolding noise. My reverie broke and I walked to the station to take the one train downtown to my ragged office where I spent my day chewing on chunks of nut.

On the last day of Earl’s trapping schedule, a Havahart cage was sprung, shut tight but empty. I asked him about it. He said it could have been a bird. They are often small enough to fit through the holes in the wire.

“Their little bird eyes don’t see that wire around ‘em. They walk right out as if nothing has happened. You can’t keep a bird in one of these cages. They got freedom in their genes. It’s not a choice for them. They just go.”

Many of the women I knew in prison will be finding their own new freedoms by the time you hear my voice.

Many will be left behind to listen to the reminder of birdsong from the trees outside the barbed wire. The squirrels will adjust to the taller trees of Westchester, and I will unfurl again, closer to home with every step.

Mary Ellen Sanger lived for 17 years in Mexico, and has published in several Mexican journals, including Luna Zeta and Zocalo. Her essay “A Grammar of Place” was anthologized in Mexico, a Love Story, published in 2006 by Seal Press. She was a finalist for the Room of Her Own Foundation “Gift of Freedom” in 2007, and was awarded a writers’ grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for Women. She is currently writing a collection of stories inspired by the women of Ixcotel State Penitentiary in Oaxaca, Mexico where she spent 33 days and nights falsely imprisoned in the fall of 2003. Mary Ellen leads a creative writing workshop for adults through New York Writers Coalition at the New York Public Library.