Джойс Оутс - Prison Noir

Before I even got to the second step to go downstairs to the boys, I could hear the click, click from him cocking the gun. I stood still, my stomach in knots, my throat tight. I looked up at him standing at the banister, naked, his eyes crazed with rage.

“Baby, what the fuck do you really think you’re doing?” he said.

I could barely breathe, much less answer. As I turned to walk back up the steps, he grabbed my hair and pulled me into our room.

“I asked you a question, baby. What were you thinking? You’re choosing those cum-crunchers over me? No one comes before me, no one!”

I still didn’t speak. I just stood there with my hair in his hand while he waved the loaded gun in my face. Every time he asked me a question — and every time I didn’t answer — he became more enraged. My throat was too tight. My hands were trembling. This felt like the moment he had been waiting for, the reason he had purchased those bullets.

“Guess what, bitch? You chose the bastards over me, but you won’t have that option again. Whichever one of them hasn’t drunk the milk in his cereal bowl, that’s the boy who gets it first.”

The Monster had a rule that the boys needed to clean their plates no matter what. This included his own son, after a year: if he didn’t eat all the food the Monster prepared, he would force-feed him until he puked, then get pissed and say his son was becoming too picky, just like the other cum-crunchers of mine. I made every effort to serve food everyone liked just for this reason, but no one, including me, ever drank the milk in the cereal bowl if we could get away with sneaking it into the kitchen and pouring it down the drain. We had the oddest rules in our house.

The Monster shoved me onto the bed and went on and on about how I had betrayed him, how this isn’t how things were supposed to be, how the kids had made me impure. Nothing made sense. He went to put on a shirt and laid the gun on the nightstand. Without a thought, I picked it up and simply shot him in the back of the head.

He turned around and laughed at me.

Holy shit! This was it. My life was over. I held on to that gun like it was my own hand. We weren’t going to make it through this. His fingernails dug into my hands, but I was not going to let go. He was not going to get my boys. He was screaming, and I must have kept shooting.

The rest is like a puzzle. Pieces are missing, and no combination provides me with the entire picture. Even now, a decade later, I stare at each one, waiting for closure. I shot him seven times and only recall three. Logically, I know I did them all, but I just can’t remember. It’s like being in a car crash — you know something happened, you recall some parts, but most of it is a blur.

I told my attorney he had purchased quiet bullets to kill us with. The attorney told me there was no such thing, that there must have been a silencer. There wasn’t, and I knew this for a fact because the Monster used to play Russian roulette with me if I didn’t have the laundry done on time. His schedules and his rules took over my life. Since the Monster’s clothes were not to be washed with the boys’ clothing, I would run late. On those nights, Russian roulette became the norm. Once the weapon clicked and I was still alive, he’d keep playing with his guns, cleaning them and shooting them out the backyard, trying to hit the basketball, as I finished up the wash. I was very familiar with the quietness of the bullets. He told me he purchased them specifically to kill us so that the neighbors would not hear. I had no reason not to believe him, all things considered. I had never known him to make an idle threat. He always followed through.

When the ballistics came back, my attorney apologized. The bullets had no gunpowder and are illegal to purchase; this is why they made so little noise, and likely why the Monster laughed at me when I shot him. The first shot didn’t even pierce his thick skull. After that first shot, I believe karma, fate, luck, or just a mother’s sheer will to protect, took over.

There is no fate taking over my present situation. American Idol’s psychosis is getting worse, and my sanity is teetering. A hospital run would give us some relief. We need that. Eighteen days ago, I stopped taking my blood pressure pills.

Twenty-eight days the Monster lay dead in our bedroom before I buried him in the backyard. Thirty-two days it took me to clean up our room. When it was all clean, I knocked on the police station’s door and turned myself in. Before that, I forced myself into that room for one hour every night after I put the boys to bed. I puked every time I entered it; the stench was overwhelming. Our last morning together would flash over and over in my mind like a film on repeat. I wasn’t able to sleep, I was short with the boys, I wasn’t able to function except to clean up this mess from the Monster, just as I had been doing for years. Every time we fought, I cleaned the room, cleaned up my body, hid the bruises, fixed the broken doors, fixed the chairs. I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned.

Once everything was done in the bedroom — the carpet removed and replaced, the bed thrown out on bulk trash day — I put up wallpaper, bought a peaceful rocking chair for the room, and just sat there. I never cried; I just sat there. I didn’t know what to do. What I did know was, if something had happened to any of my sons, no matter what, I would want closure. I would want to know what happened to my son even if he was a beast. I couldn’t live with the Monster’s parents always wondering what happened to their child. They deserved some peace of mind. I spent one last weekend with my children before knocking on the police station’s door. After that I took a plea, and ended up here at Death Valley.

Lately, Death Valley has been entirely too much for me. The constant noise from American Idol is like bugs crawling in my ears. I wonder if that is how the Monster felt about the boys. All I know is, one way or another, I need to have some peace. Thirty-six pills I crushed up with my lock and stirred them into the chili. One bowl has beans and one does not. The bowl without the beans has the pills. American Idol’s greed may very well be the death of her. Two bowls: one for her, one for me; her choice, my treat. I mix up a glass of Nestea iced tea and offer her some chili. This significant moment is mine.

Ionia Correctional Facility (Ionia, Michigan)

Fish! Every day they come in younger and younger. Pretty soon they’ll be babies, and I’ll end up having a work detail changing diapers. I’d rather shine shoes than smell shit all day and hear their crying. Oh, they’ll be crying when they get behind the wall, the whole lot of ’em, whining all day — mama can’t help now! They all look the same too, when they first come inside: stretched face, locked lips, eyes out of sockets, looking up and ’round the rotunda, dumbstruck on how big and old it is. Ain’t no pictures on the walls and ceiling. No saints, no angels, just cracks and chipped paint, dirty gray and filthy white, ugly ’nuff to be a sin. God ain’t in here, oh no, only all kinds of religious groups. Some of ’em fishes gone be on their knees serving with their mouth, others gone be carrying a flat piece of steel in the name of a group. Some don’t make it a day and run to Blue Hoe Card. Getting on protection won’t help ’em none — what they’re running from is there too, or can get there the same way.

Oh, ’em fishes would come in and see a lot of guards at the rotunda — keys jingling and boots stepping hard on the concrete floor, moving in a hurry — having their fish heads spinning and hearts jumping, feeling so safe, and for good reason. It’s a setup for failure though. When they get behind the wall, eager feet to the rescue is the last thing they’ll be hearing and seeing; they’ll be scared, and for a-whole-’nother reason. They’ll see me shining guards’ boots — the white man’s. I know what they be thinking, Jabo Tut’s a house nigger! Before long, a whole lot of ’em wished they was shining shoes instead.