Stubborn Children (November 20, 2010. Issue 22.)
The court says I’m a stubborn child. They’re sending me to a kid’s jail and I wonder if I’m going there to be killed. They killed stubborn children in the Bible-Deuteronomy.
I rode in the car
with the locked doors
and cracked windows
quiet, hardly breathing
watching the road roll,
take a turn to
the left
and stop.
“You can cry, you know,” the female officer said.
The building was gray
with tall steel fences
picnic tables in twos
and a basketball court
behind the fence, empty.
The wind whispered wild
stories and hurled thunderous threats
that this would be my unenviable life
forever.
And I thought,
No.
“Okay, let’s go, tough girl,” she said, as the car doors unlocked. I got out without help. She instructed me to walk in front of her so she could, “Keep an eye on you, tough girl,” and I do what she says
with my head
bowed
wrists cuffed
heart thumping
afraid,
yes.
And I still thought,
No.
Her key opened the
door and I breathed in hostile air
and I saw the well oiled faces
check me out with old eyes.
“Take a shower in here and take these clothes. Leave your dirty clothes on the floor,” the blue tunic Matron said. “Use this soap for your body and this for your hair. Leave the towels on the floor. Call me when you’re done.”
“Follow the rules or you’ll be put in the room at the end of the hall with the queers. Do you understand? You don’t want to share a room with them.”
“No, I don’t understand,” I said, but she didn’t seem to care.
The shower was cool,
then cold, freezing fast
the fear,
how do I get dressed?
The sting of alone
swelled like an infected
boil and my fist hit,
struck back in a fit
against a cement wall
and then
the child is defiant,
a danger to herself,
put alone,
separate
like home,
with bars.
Still…
I know this place
of surprise and carnivorous
melancholy.
Like home only
not, just a grave
new plot to unravel.
There is no crying
in this place
where my eleven year old roommate
says she blows her uncle
and Idon’t know what
she means, but I
know enough about
her eyes
to stay
quiet.
Sixteen year old Michelle, who preferred to be called Mic, had long, straight, brown hair and always sat on a chair in the middle of everything, surrounded by friends, guards, and the rest of us, who just wandered around trying to be invisible. Once a sunbeam found its way in and draped itself over the chair, lighting up her hair with golden streaks. But, her eyes still looked empty and her lips naturally curved down around rotten teeth. Someone told me not to come up on her from behind and I’d be safe. |