Love You More

26

Every woman has a moment in her life when she realizes she genuinely loves a guy, and he’s just not worth it. It took me nearly three years to reach that point with Brian. Maybe there were signs along the way. Maybe, in the beginning, I was just so happy to have a man love me and my daughter as much as Brian seemed to love me and Sophie, I ignored them. Yes, he could be moody. After the initial six-month honeymoon, the house became his anal-retentive domain, Sophie and I receiving daily lectures if we left a dish on the counter, a toothbrush out of its holder, a crayon on the table.

Brian liked precision, needed it.

“I’m an engineer,” he’d remind me. “Trust me, you don’t want a dam built by a sloppy engineer.”

Sophie and I did our best. Compromise, I told myself. The price of family; you gave up some of your individual preferences for the greater good. Plus, Brian would leave again and Sophie and I would spend a giddy eight weeks dumping our junk all over the place. Coats draped over the back of kitchen chairs. Art projects piled on the corner of the counter. Yes, we were regular Girls Gone Wild when Brian shipped out.

Then, one day I went to pay the plumber and discovered our life savings was gone.

It’s a tough moment when you have to confront the level of your own complacency. I knew Brian had been going to Foxwoods. More to the point, I knew the evenings he came home reeking of booze and cigarettes, but claimed he’d been hiking. He’d lied to me, on several occasions, and I’d let it go. To pry would involve being told an answer I didn’t want to hear. So I didn’t pry.

While my husband, apparently, gave in to his inner demons and gambled away our savings account.

Shane and I confronted him. He denied it. Not very plausibly. But at a certain point, there wasn’t much more I could do or say. The money magically returned, and again, I didn’t ask many questions, not wanting to know what I didn’t want to know.

I thought of my husband as two people after that. There was Good Brian, the man I fell in love with, who picked up Sophie after school and took her sledding until they were both pink-cheeked from laughter. Good Brian fixed me pancakes and maple syrup when I got home from graveyard shift. He would rub my back, strained from the weight of carrying body armor. He would hold me while I slept.

Then there was Bad Brian. Bad Brian yelled at me when I forgot to wipe down the counter after doing the dishes. Bad Brian was curt and distant, not only turning the TV to whatever testosterone-bound show he could find, but turning up the volume if Sophie or I tried to protest.

Bad Brian smelled like cigarettes, booze, and sweat. He worked out compulsively, with the demons of a man with something to fear. Then he’d disappear for a couple of days at a time-time with the guys, Bad Brian would say, when we both knew he was going off alone, his friends having long since given up on him.

But that was Bad Brian for you. He could look his state police officer wife in the eye, and tell a lie.

It always made me wonder: Would he be a different kind of husband if I were a different kind of wife?

Bad Brian broke my heart. Then Good Brian would reappear long enough to patch it back together again. And around and around we would go, plummeting through the roller coaster ride of our lives.

Except all rides have to end.

Good Brian and Bad Brian’s ride ended at exactly the same moment, on our kitchen’s spotlessly clean floor.

Bad Brian can’t hurt me or Sophie anymore.

Good Brian is going to take me a while to let go.

Tuesday morning, seven a.m.

The female CO started head count and the unit officially stirred to life. My roommate, Erica, had already been awake for an hour, curled up in the fetal position, rocking back and forth, eyes pinned on something only she could see, while muttering beneath her breath.

I would guess she’d retired to her bunk shortly after midnight. No watch on my wrist, no clock in the cell, so I had to gauge the time in my head. It gave me something to do all night long-I think it’s… two a.m., three a.m., four twenty-one a.m.

I fell asleep once. I dreamt of Sophie. She and I were in a vast, churning ocean, paddling for all we were worth against steadily climbing waves.

“Stay with me,” I screamed at her. “Stay with me, I’ll keep you safe!”

But her head disappeared beneath the black water, and I dove and I dove and I dove, but I couldn’t find my daughter again.

I woke up, tasting salt on my lips. I didn’t sleep again.

The tower made noises in the night. Nameless women, goading nameless groaning men. The rattle of pipes. The hum of a huge facility, trying to settle its bones. It felt as if I were inside some giant beast, swallowed up whole. I kept touching the walls, as if the rough feel of cinder blocks would keep me grounded. Then I would get up and pee, as the cover of night was the closest to privacy I could get.

The female CO had reached our cell. She glanced at rocking Erica, then at me, and our eyes met, a flicker of recognition, before she turned away.

Kim Watters. Dated one of the guys in the barracks, had attended a couple of the group dinners. ’Course. CO at the Suffolk County Jail. Now I remembered.

She moved to the next cell. Erica rocked harder. I peered out the barred window and tried to convince myself that personally knowing my own prison guard didn’t make things worse.

Seven-thirty. Breakfast.

Erica was up. Still muttering, not looking at me. Agitated. Meth had fried her brain. She needed rehab, and mental health services more than a jail sentence. Then again, welcome to most of the prison population.

We got limp pancakes, applesauce, and milk. Erica put the applesauce on her pancakes, rolled it all together, and ate it in three giant mouthfuls. Four gulps took care of the milk. Then she eyed my tray.

I had no appetite. The pancakes tasted like wet tissue on my tongue. I stared at her and slowly ate them anyway.

Erica sat on the toilet. I turned around to give her privacy.

She laughed.

Later, I used my hooter bag to brush my teeth and apply deodorant. Then… Then I didn’t really know what to do. Welcome to my first full day in prison.

Rec time arrived. The CO opened our cell. Some women drifted out, some stayed inside. I couldn’t take it anymore. The ten foot ceilings and yawning windows gave the illusion of space, but a jail cell was a jail cell. I already felt overflouresced, pining for natural sunlight.

I paced over to the sitting area at one end of the commons, where six ladies had gathered to watch GMA. The show was too happy for me. Next, I tried the tables, four silver rounds where two women currently played hearts, while one more sat and cackled at something only she understood.

A shower went on. I didn’t look. I didn’t want to know.

Then I heard a funny sound, like a shivery gasp, someone trying to inhale and exhale at the same time.

I turned around. The CO, Kim Watters, looked like she was doing a funny dance. Her body was up in the air, her feet twitching as if reaching for the floor, except they couldn’t find it. A giant black female with long dark hair stood directly behind her, heavily muscled arm cocked around Kim’s windpipe, squeezing tight even as Kim’s fingers scraped frantically at the massive forearm.

I stepped forward and in the next instant, my roommate, Erica, screamed, “Get the fucking pig!” and half a dozen detainees rushed toward me.

I took the first blow in the stomach. I tightened my abs reflexively, rocked left and drove my fist into a soft, oomphing middle. Another careening blow. Ducking low, moving on instinct now, because that’s why recruits trained. Do the impossible over and over and it becomes the possible. Better yet, it becomes routine, meaning one day, when you least expect it, months and years of training can suddenly save your life.

Another hard crack to my shoulder. They were aiming for my face, my swollen eye and shattered cheek. I brought up both hands in the classic pugilist stance, blocking my head, while driving myself toward the closest attacker. I caught her around the waist and flung her back at the rushing stampede, toppling two in a tangle of limbs.

Cries. Pain, rage, theirs, mine, didn’t really matter. Moving, moving, moving, had to stay on my feet, confront the onslaught or be crushed by sheer numbers.

Sharp sting. Something cutting my forearm, while another fist connected with my shoulder. I sidestepped again, drove my elbow into the stomach of the attacker, then the side of my hand sharp into her throat. She went down and stayed there.

The remaining four finally backed up. I kept my gaze on them, trying to process many things at once. Other detainees, where? Back in their cells? Self-imposed confinement so they wouldn’t be busted later?

And Kim? Gasping scuffle behind me. Officer down, officer down, officer down.

Panic button. Had to be one somewhere-

Fresh slice to my arm. I slapped at it, kicking out and catching the woman in the knee.

Then I screamed. I screamed and screamed and screamed, days’ worth of rage and helplessness and frustration finally erupting from my throat, because Kim was dying and my daughter was probably already dead and my husband had died, right in front of my eyes, taking Good Brian with him, and the man in black had taken my daughter and left behind only the blue button eye from her favorite doll and I would get them. I would make them all pay.

Then I moved. I was probably still screaming. A lot. And I don’t think it was a sane sound because my attackers retreated until I was the one falling upon them, lips peeled back, hands fisted into hard balls.

I moved, I kicked, I jabbed, and I punched. I was twenty-three years old again. Behold the Giant Killer. Behold the Giant Killer really truly pissed off.

And my face dripped with sweat and my hands dripped with blood and the first two females were down and the third was running now, ironically toward the safety of her cell, but the fourth had a shank and she thought that would keep her safe. She’d probably fought off aggressive johns and pissed-off pimps. I was just a prissy white girl and no match for a genuine graduate of the school of hard knocks.

Rattling gasp from the CO’s desk. The sound of a woman dying.

“Do it!” I snarled at her. “Come on, bitch. Show me what you got.”

She charged. Stupid shit. I moved left, and straight-armed her in the throat. She dropped the shank and clutched at her crushed windpipe. I picked up the shank, and jumped over her body for central command.

Kim’s toes weren’t dancing anymore. She remained suspended in the air, black arm still twisted around her throat as her eyes glazed over.

I stepped around her.

I looked up at the large black female who turned out not to be a female at all, but a long-haired male who’d somehow infiltrated the unit.

He appeared startled to see me.

So I smiled at him. Then drove the shank through his ribs.

Kim’s body dropped to the floor. The inmate staggered back, grabbing his side. I advanced upon him. He scrambled, twisting around, trying to run for the unit door. I kicked him in the back of his right knee. He stumbled. I kicked him in the back of the left knee. He went down, then rolled over, hands coming up defensively.

I stood over him, holding the bloody shank. I must have looked fearsome, with my dripping hands, battered face, and one good eye, because large black male peed his orange prison jumpsuit.

I raised the shank.

“No,” he whispered hoarsely.

I brought it down into the meat of his thigh. He screamed. I twisted.

Then I sang for the entire unit to hear: “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth, my two front teeth, two front teeth…”

The inmate cried, as I leaned over, brushed back the long dark locks of his hair, and whispered like a lover in his ear: “Tell the man in black I’m coming for him. Tell him he’s next.”

I twisted the shank again.

Then I stood up, wiped the shank on my pant leg, and hit the panic button.

Do you mourn when your world has ended? When you have arrived at a destination from where there is no going back?

The SERT team descended as a stampede. The entire facility went to lockdown. I was shackled where I stood, legs swaying, arms lacerated, fresh bruises blooming down my sides and across my back.

They removed Kim on a stretcher, unconscious but breathing.

My fourth attacker, the one who’d brought the shank, left in a body bag. I watched them zip it up. I felt nothing at all.

Erica sobbed. Screamed and wailed and carried on to such an extent, they finally carted her off to Medical, where she would be heavily sedated and put under suicide watch. Others were questioned, but in the way these things worked, they had no idea what had just taken place.

“In my cell the whole time…”

“Never looked out…”

“Heard some noises, though…”

“Sounded like a lot of ass-whooping…”

“I slept through the whole thing, Officer. Really, I did.”

The male inmate, however, told anyone who would listen that I was the angel of death, and please God, please God, please God, keep me away from him.

The assistant deputy superintendent finally halted in front of me. He studied me for a long time, his expression judging me more trouble than I was worth.

He delivered my punishment as a single word. “Segregation.”

“I want my lawyer.”

“Who attacked the CO, detainee?”

“Mrs. Doubtfire.”

“Mrs. Doubtfire, sir. Now, why did the inmate attack CO Watters?”

“Don’t know, sir.”

“You’ve been in prison less than twenty-four hours. How’d you get a shank?”

“Took it off the ho’ trying to kill me.” I paused. “Sir.”

“All six of them?”

“Don’t fuck with the state police. Sir.”

He almost smiled. Instead, he jerked his thumb toward the ceiling and the multiple mounted cameras. “Here’s the thing about prison: Big Brother’s always watching. So last time, detainee, anything you want to tell me?”

“Officer Watters owes me a thank you card.”

He didn’t argue, so maybe he already knew more than he was letting on. “Medical,” he said now, gesturing to my sliced-up forearms.

“Lawyer,” I repeated.

“The request will be sent through proper channels.”

“Don’t have time.” I looked the assistant deputy superintendent in the eye. “I have decided to cooperate fully with the Boston police,” I declared for all to hear. “Call Detective D. D. Warren. Tell her I will take her to my daughter’s body.”