Kyril's Journal -- August 13, 2005

Visit to a Prison

Saturday August 13, 2005

We went to visit Cherie at the Women’s prison. The whole experience was very odd. We parked in the lot across the street and paid the fee. I didn’t take a purse with me though now I realize I could have taken it but put it in the trunk of the car when we got out. Faol left his wallet in the trunk. We could only take 1 ID and 1 key with us into the section where the prisoners were. Inside the building was a large room with big concrete benches filling most of the middle of the room. At one end is the walled room for the guards with three windows for interaction. In that it really didn’t look that different from a movie theatre. To one side of the room was a counter and next to that were small lockers for possessions – takes a quarter – and we could have left our belongings in one instead of the trunk. On the other side of the room was a flat dividing ribbon indicating the appropriate place to wait and a line to wait behind until called.

Small clusters of people were chatting. Some had children along and most of them were black. There was a kind of low-level hum of conversation and an air of excitement. I felt that this was a normal part of their lives, rather than an unusual element. I was the odd one out, uncertain, nervous, uncomfortable.

We stood in line. Lucky it was just us in line as that is when we found out about the visitor’s form, (afterward Faol remembered it from the first time he came) then we stood in line again after borrowing a pencil, (We didn’t bring a pen and they no longer loan them out because people weren’t returning them.) and filling out the form but when we got to the window the person behind the window said it must be written in pen. We borrowed a pen from a woman Faol pointed to as someone who looked like she knew what she was doing. She loaned it to us with an easy even friendly manner (though my own underlying prejudice was prominent and I was uncomfortable about approaching her more for my feeling that she might be affected by the color or our skin than discomfort about hers) and we redid it then stood in line again, and it was still just us. Every one else had come earlier and filled out their forms. Now they were just socializing or putting belongings in a locker and waiting.

Then we waited until the half hour when they called out the names of the inmates and we all shuffled into a line again. Faol caught her name. I found it hard to understand the loudspeaker. We went to the side of the windowed area rather than the front and showed our ID, which was compared with the names on the form we had filled out. We were directed to the appropriate floor and side but I didn’t seem able to keep it in my mind or separate it out from what was being said. But Faol did. Then we went through a metal detector before going up the elevator to her floor. She was the only one there, handcuffed to a seat behind the glass. Faol picked up the phone and held it between our ears so we could both hear and talk with her. It was very difficult. She has been in lockdown since she was attacked by 5 girls. They tried to pull her off her bunk so they could beat her up but she held on and wouldn’t be pulled down. Because she is accused of child abuse the inmates and the guards are not kind to her. But she is strong and she is managing. She spoke of how filthy the lockdown room was when she got there and how she couldn’t sleep in such filth. She didn’t have a mat to sleep on for the first couple days. She told us how she had to clean the floor and walls with her toothbrush. She is not feeling a lot of hope. They weren’t giving her the anti-depressants she is supposed to be taking either.

She is accused of child abuse/lewd behavior in front of a minor. It stems from her trying to teach her children the kinds of behavior they should not tolerate from others. I guess she went a bit farther than she should have but she feels she did what was necessary to prevent her daughters having teen pregnancies. Her ex-husband was abusive and she left him. She was unable to take her daughters with her when she went. It appears that her ex has been turning them against her. She has no money, only a public defender, and is not getting the help she needs. This is just one more abusive situation for her in a lifetime. That was hard for me to hear. I felt helpless to change her situation and conflicted over my own feelings about what she admitted to us – something still quite minor and not worthy of being in prison, in my opinion, but more than I could find acceptable. And I felt depressed and angry over her treatment and over the situation that put her there. We were able to walk away from that place.

Afterward Faol took me to Olvera street, which is a Hispanic vending area, as a treat and a way to try and shift our focus and feelings to something more pleasant. We walked down one side and up the other, looking at all the cool leather goods. I bought a few small items for gifts. Faol bought us a couple of candies, a cocada and a rosequilla, or something like that. They were very good.

Now we are watching Aliens, which I haven’t watched in the past because it was scary, and I was assured by friends that the bug like aliens would be upsetting for me. It still is scary but I am a little better about dealing with things like this now, and it is daylight, and Faol is here. After all these years though I was finally able to see for myself the two mothers squaring off against each other. It was interesting to see the dynamic that my friends had discussed. Perhaps equally interesting to me in some ways is that I remembered the discussion.

Later we went out to Boston Market for dinner because I had looked up the Triple A discount page and discovered we could get 10% off. We looked up Boston Markets in L.A. that would be near a video rental so we could rent three movies: Wolf, Vanity Fair, I have forgotten the name of the other. It must not have been very memorable.