What I Remember Most (6 page)

I could not believe I was here.

I was told by the sergeant in charge of me to follow the black stripe on the floor to a large closet where they stored prison clothes. I was led to an open cubicle and told to strip. She was a no-nonsense, don’t-mess-with-me sort of woman.

I took off all my clothes, my hands trembling so hard I could hardly manage. I was given a dark blue bag with a black zipper to put them in. She examined me front and back, then I was told to bend over, spread my butt, and cough.

I hesitated for a second, and she told me, again, “Turn around, bend over, spread them, cough.”

It is impossible to describe how demeaning and vulnerable it feels to be naked, bent over, pulling your butt cheeks apart, and coughing while someone watches, so I won’t try.

“People put all kinds of things up their human suitcases,” she muttered.

Swing me a cat! “Up their
butts?
” She allowed me to turn around again.

“We see it all the time. Sometimes they hide it behind a tampon. That’s why we don’t allow tampons here.”

Oh, gross. I hoped the curse would hold off another week. She gave me prison-issued light blue clothing, a top with a V, and pants. They looked like scrubs but were heavier, rougher. I also received a pink T-shirt, a pair of beige rubbery sandals, pink socks, pink underwear, and an ill-fitting pink bra. All had clearly been used a thousand times.

Each piece was stamped with the word JAIL.

When I was dressed like an inmate, she handed me a baggie with a toothbrush and toothpaste, paper, a flexible pen so I couldn’t “use it as a weapon,” deodorant, shampoo, and maxi pads.

She gave me two beige blankets, a bedroll, two sheets, a towel, and a pillowcase.

“Do male guards do this with women inmates?”

“Nope. Gender to gender. Let’s go.”

We walked back out. A TV was on. Men and women, inmates like me, were sitting in chairs, waiting. There were officials everywhere, in beige, in uniform, with stun guns and pepper spray containers. There was little air flow. No windows. The whole world was now gone.

There were cameras covering each inch of that building. You could not fart without someone knowing.

We stood in front of a steel, light green door. It did not open immediately. We had to wait for someone else to buzz us through. I heard the buzz. The door opened.

I thought about how much I hated Covey, then I put my shoulders back, put my tough lady face on, and gathered up my alpha personality. Jail is like the jungle. The weak are preyed upon.

I would not be weak.

I would not be prey.

My divorce attorney, Cherie Poitras, called me.

“How are you, Dina?”

“Not joyful.”

“No, I don’t suppose you are.”

Cherie wears four-inch heels, animal prints, and black leather. Men fear her. She likes it.

She rides a motorcycle and currently has four foster kids, which made me like her from the start. She has an edge and had a lousy childhood. We got along.

I met her when she commissioned a mural from me. I showed her a design I thought she might like. It was a woman holding a bow and arrow. The bow and arrow were authentic. I’d attached it to the canvas and to the plywood under the canvas. Surrounding the bow and arrow were flowers I’d made out of beads, as if they were flowing gracefully through on a wind stream. The whole ethereal effect was an interesting juxtaposition to the man running in the distance, away from the bow-and-arrow-shooting woman.

Most of her clients are divorcing women, and they are unhappy. Perhaps that explains the collage best.

She put the collage on the opposite wall from a sign stating her company’s motto: Poitras and Associates: We’ll Kick Some Ass For You.

Cherie told me about her strategy to “rack Covey’s genitalia.”

“I will get this done for you, Dina. This is gonna be fun. You know, fun like you and I have when we go to target practice. Shooting fun.”

Shooting fun. I knew who I wanted to shoot.

On Saturday morning, jittery, anxious, I grabbed my sketch pad and a black charcoal pencil and drew a girl in a closet, her arms over her head, semiburied behind clothes and shoes, a rat in the corner.

I drew another picture of her with a leash on her neck, being dragged.

I drew her alone in a forest.

I drew her in the hospital, unconscious.

I drew quick, angry, panting, biting my lip.

When I was done, I felt like there was nothing left in me.

I have tried burying my past.

It doesn’t work.

This is how I push it back.

They had all called and e-mailed many times.

“It’s our Grenadine!” I heard her shout when she picked up the phone. “On this here telephone, by hell! That Covey is a sick possum, and I want to run over him with my truck. You come on home to us. No one can come and get you here. We’ll hide ya. Right, boys?”

I heard them shoot off their guns in the background, yelling their agreement that Covey was a “dead man” and a “skunk-shooting loser” and “By shots and by fire, we’re gonna smash him with the tractors when he’s not lookin’!”

I made the second call after the first. She cried when she heard my voice. “I love you, baby. Come here and live with me.”

I told her I couldn’t. I needed to be out of town, and I didn’t need her, or them, harassed by the press. It wouldn’t look right for me to hang out with felons, either, unfortunately.

I bent my head and sobbed. Love will do that to you sometimes.

There were a lot of martinis and daiquiris ordered on Monday night at The Spirited Owl. Plus beer. Rivers of beer.

Two men hit on me. I actually saw one eye me up and down, smile, then, when I turned away, he took off his wedding ring and slipped it into his coat. I saw what he was doing via the mirror behind the bar. What a jerk. When he said to me, “How about dinner, Miss Green Eyes?” I said, “Get your wife on the phone. Let’s ask her first. If she says yes, my answer is still no, because I find you sneaky and weasel-like, but I am curious about her opinion.”

The men around him laughed. He weaseled off that barstool.

The other man was polite, asked to take me to coffee. “Ah, coffee,” I said. “So you don’t think I’m worth dinner?”

He backed up, asked me to dinner. I smiled. “Thank you, but no. And remember, if you want to impress a woman, ask her to dinner. And pay for it.”

It’s degrading to be hit on all the time as a bartender. It’s not flattering. It doesn’t boost my ego. These men, for some asinine reason, think that a bartender is easy game. Probably because I serve them drinks and listen to them. To them that equals, for some ball-knocking reason, that I must be attracted to them.

Men are so clogged in the head sometimes I want to bang their heads together and let their brains crawl away.

I also heard the usual complaints from various men:

One slug of a man said, “Women are so picky. If you don’t look like Brad Pitt or you’re not rich, they don’t want you.”

I said, “No, they don’t want you, Marley, because you look like you have a baby in your stomach, you’re unshaven, you drink too much, and all you want to do is talk about yourself and whine in that whiny voice of yours. Would you be attracted to you? No? Then why would a woman be?”

He stared at me, eyes wide in his big, bald head, then said, slowly. “By God, you might be right, Grenady.”

“I am right.”

The next complaint was a ringer, to which I showed a boatload of compassion: “My wife’s always complaining because she don’t get no free time cause of the kids.”

“How many kids do you two have?”

“Five.”

I slammed a pitcher of beer down. My anger is always simmering. “You’re here every night and you’re complaining about your wife because she says she needs free time? You must be joking, Selfish One. What do you think you’re doing here? Working?”

“Uh. No.”

“You’re having free time. I dare you to let your wife come sit at this bar and you go home and take care of the kids.”

“I don’t want my wife here! There’s a whole bunch of men here.”

“Why don’t you go home and love your wife before she discovers there’s a whole bunch of men here and chooses one to live with who is not
you?
”

His face paled.

“You think she won’t do that? You think she won’t fall in love with some other man simply because she said ‘I do’ to you years ago when she was young and not thinking rationally? She said a vow and you think that will keep your wife from leaving some jackass husband who goes to a bar like a liquor leech and talks behind her back?”

“Uh.”

“Uh yourself. Ask yourself an easy question: What are you doing to keep your wife in love with you? What?”

“I’m her husband!”

“Big deal. I can assure you that part is not impressive. All you have to have to be a husband is a marriage license and a dick. Yours is probably small, but she signed the paper, poor woman. You should do what you can to prevent her from signing another piece of paper saying you are now her ex-husband because her life would be easier without you. Now, good-bye.” I took his beer. “Tip first, Selfish One.”

He gave me a five and scuttled on out.

Tildy came up behind me. “I believe you’re teaching the men some life skills.”

“Never too late to learn.” I took a deep breath and buried my flying temper.

“I grew up on a ranch, and I’d call some of the men we deal with in here Buzzard Kill.”

“As in buzzards would kill them?”

“As in that’s about what they’re worth.” She knocked on the bar with her knuckles. “You know, Kade Hendricks made this bar for me. It’s my most prized possession. Kade himself gave me a deal on it because he likes my Blue Stallion Crunch. I always make his burger myself, to thank him for this.” She bent and kissed the bar. “Exquisite.”

“I hope he hires me.”

“Betcha he will, Grenady. You work hard.” She crossed her arms and laughed. “But do not try to cut that man down to size like you do with some of the men in here. That man’s a man, and he would not take kindly to that.”

“Thanks for the insight.”

“My pleasure.” She got her gun out to clean it again.

That night, buried under my blankets and sleeping bag, I thought about my little green home, the house I owned before I met Covey. I sold it after we were married, when he pushed, because I was in love and grossly irrational.

It was small, maybe a thousand square feet, in a Portland neighborhood that was somewhat edgy, on the poor and ramshackle side here and there, but many of the houses were being remodeled and repainted, and new shops were going in nearby, so it was up and coming.

My home was about eighty years old, with old-fashioned built-in bookshelves, a built-in dresser, and a white fireplace surrounded by shiny, emerald green tile. When I ripped up the stained, gray carpets I found untouched wood floors.

There were three tiny bedrooms downstairs, in addition to the family room and kitchen, but I had walls knocked out to open it all up, leaving one small bedroom in the back for me. I painted all the walls white. I painted the kitchen cabinets azure blue; added beige laminate counters; and put in two blue, red, and yellow pedestal lights that resembled stained glass.

My studio was the whole upstairs under a peaked roof. I called it my attic studio. I filled it with two long work tables and two easels. I painted two tall bookcases turquoise and filled them with books on art, artists, and artists’ studios, which I rarely read, but I loved the photos.

I painted two shorter bookcases red and pushed them up against the two large windows on either side of the room. They were perfect for my flowering plants and bonsai trees. I had two wood dressers—one pink, one green—for supplies; two small wood tables that could be moved as needed; and three wood chairs in purple, green, and yellow. I had a few of my own collages on the walls, the ones that didn’t disturb me.

I also had boxes, jars, and plastic containers full of paints, brushes, pencils, pastels, buttons, coins, chalk, sparkly jewelry from Goodwill, sequins, beads, yarn, string, shells, dice, game pieces, wood letters, dollhouse furniture, rocks, broken glass, lace, and a bunch of other things. (No rope. No bits of rope. I don’t use rope in my art, ever.)

I had fabric stacked up and wicker baskets filled with sewing supplies next to my sewing machine. I had a comfy red chair and a flowered footstool by one of the windows so I could sit and think and sketch. I had a stack of newspapers, magazines, sheet music, old books, and colorful wallpaper.

I lit candles with names like Blueberry Dazzle, Cinnamon Crunch, and Tangerine Apple on cool days.

I had two skylights put in when I had to replace the roof after the rain came through like a waterfall late one night. I had recessed lights in the ceiling, but I also bought three lights and decorated the lampshades in red and yellow fabrics and ribbons.

My canvases were stacked up against a wall. I don’t work small. My smallest canvas is four by four, a perfect square; most are much larger. It is not unusual for me to create collages and paintings on eight-by-ten-foot canvasses.