Ohio State Prison - Part 4

Mary Alice had never planned on having her baby in jail. She was one of those little girls who grew up, dreaming, hoping- nay, actually sketching, planning and practically blueprinting her wedding day, and the birth of her child. Every time, as a little girl, she would see an over the top wedding dress, in a movie, in a magazine, she’d tear it out. Log it, take notes and add it to the grand novel she was writing, of her own wedding day and child, and dress, the one she knew it was her birthright to receive. Fanciful like a fairytale princess of course, but never revealing in any way. Mary Alice had an almost built in aversion to the non-traditional, since men didn’t marry whores after all, as she plainly heard her mother note many, many times. As a little girl, Mary Alice made the mistake of putting on her mother’s red lipstick – truth be told her mother wore it once, having bought it on a whim for a fancy holiday party (it seemed festive and her mother could always be counted upon to create a festive home for the holidays), but the next morning, at breakfast, while her father was all happy-go-lucky, whistling and all around jolly, her mother, complaining of a bad back (and she was Not one to complain), was quiet; almost disgruntled, and not her usual self. She jut sat there, on the easy chair, watching her soaps, and not really talking or interacting, nor paying attention to the program at all. She would just look outside at the falling snow, and the driveway, and look…troubled somehow. It was at that moment she marched upstairs (with a slightly noticeable limp), and into the bathroom that was connected to the master bedroom. There she found Mary Alice – tiny feet, playing ballerina in her old dance recital costume, standing on the toilet and leaning in, while she added another thick crimson layer of her mother’s fancy red lipstick to her smallish pout. Her mother sure found her strength then, and grabbed Mary Alice like a sack of small fruit and practically shoved her head first into the sink, so much so that Mary Alice was scared that her mother might stick her head right down the drain. She took an overused sponge, which probably had been used to clean the toilet and the floor, and smelled of old dampness, and stale bleach and raked it back and forth, across Mary Alice’s little lips, until every last trace of the lipstick was gone. Red lipstick always leaves a stain though, so her mother kept scrubbing the bar of Dove soap into and around her mouth too – Mary Alice knew this was the punishment for saying bad words, but she was such a good girl, as they told her, that she never once went against this rule. When the great washing was done, her mother had even gotten the red stain usually left from two coats of red to disappear down the drain and onto the sponge, which her mother promptly threw away. Mary Alice cried a bit during the procedure, since it was pretty painful on the soft skin of her lips, but it was more of a whimper than a cry, a disquieting internalized reaction –probably shock, since this was one of the few times Mary Alice had ever been roughhoused by either of her parents- while her mother just kept saying in a low moan, “whores wear red. ..do you know what men do to whores? Awful things. No red lipstick will ever enter this house again…” etc. After that, Mary Alice, with her naturally reddened lips, was just left standing there, in the tiny offshoot bathroom, in her ballerina costume, while her mother clutched the dastardly red tube of unknown adult nightmares and marched outside, in her house slippers, without a coat of any kind, and threw it into the bottom of the garbage, already piled up for that night’s collecting at the street.

No, Mary Alice’s favorite dresses came up to the neck, and down to the wrist. Her husband would be a prince, and she a proper lady. A proper mother. She thought of this, as she circled her hands over her belly; cuticles cracked, especially the ring finger, bare and empty as his promises - the man who got Mary Alice pregnant, promising he was a prince – he promised her he would take her away! Turns out, he was the frog in reverse, but it was too late. No dress, no wedding, no prince. She wasn’t even wearing makeup when it happened. He told her he was going to marry her, and take care of her. Somewhere inside her, in her bloated belly and right down to her now swollen ankles, garroted by tight, over-bleached prison socks and shoes, lay Mary Alice’s grand disappointment –that he had stolen from her, which she was primed her Whole life to hold onto – it was “her power, her self, her motherhood” all wrapped up tight between her legs. But, he talked so sweetly, and looked her right in the eyes, and she thought- it didn’t matter what she thought. That shock left her lying there, afterwards, after he’d long gone and her family had disowned her, feeling like that tiny ballerina, with swollen, reddened lips, stinking of bleach. She thought this over, to herself, day after day, in the prison laundry, where of Course they assigned her. Mary Alice had a domestic quality, they said, and they thought she’d be good in the washing, the drying, the folding. Just like any good wife and mother, with a few minor alterations. Every day she had to take in that awful stench of bleach, and detergent, when she herself never felt clean since it happened. She often bit her nails down to the quick, and tugged with some new found glee at her lonely ring finger – out there, banned from gold and the world’s eyes. She’d eat her finger off one of these days, as the shock of her broken fairytale came to this, this place, these awful women, who belonged here. She fancied herself better than them, and told them stories of how her dear husband died suddenly of pneumonia – he was good, and dashing, and took great care of her until this unforeseen circumstance had landed her –unjustly of course- in prison. For, no innocent upright woman such as she would ever do anything illegal, or immoral. And wasn’t it all the more tragic that they had been expecting her baby? Truthfully, Mary Alice felt like the Virgin Mary sometimes, or Joan of Ark, which is what she yapped as if reading from a script to them who would listen. Persecuted for no reason. Still, in believing this story she told, again and again in the same roundabout motions in the prison laundry, she thought about the facts, and the story, and which, after all, was really true. If true in her head, it was true in the world, yes? It’s a good thing she was allowed to keep her dream wedding scrapbooks – she kept them neatly under her mattress and read them at night, when no one else could see her. The days became harder though. Too many questions as to why? Why, then, they'd say, was she here if she was innocent, and ain’t it funny that such a pious woman found herself in the joint, counting the days before she’d spit out a kid? The point is, Mary Alice’s story wasn’t holding water with these gritty types anymore. Her softness that she cultivated, and re-cultivated, was shot down by so-called reality, day after day, rough and scratchy white undergarments falling through her scabby and stunted hands.

Mary Alice grew angry – first at her mother for ruining her happy afternoon that winter, then at her father for ruining her mother’s back that night in December, then at these horrible people for not believing her, and lastly at him – the one who should have known she was Better than that – that she deserved a wedding, and a proper pregnancy – the sort wherein she glowed from pride and motherhood to come – not all red and clammy faced from this laundry and from the embarrassment when the others caught her, again, in a lie, or so They thought. They didn’t know her. They probably opened their legs for any Tom, Dick and Harry (or all three!) who came along and bought them a soda. This should not have happened to Mary Alice. The hatred brewed inside her, and even the child was at fault. Maybe she could start again. She was big as a whale, and shuffling from room to room like an albatross, thoughts dancing down to her nerve synapses, emptying her of all thought until the day might come when she took some stolen piece of prison cutlery (would it be sharp enough?) or picked up those strong, industrial irons and whacked those loose women in their ugly faces. Mary Alice stuffed the sheets, stained with someone’s blood, into the machine and poured the heavy duty powder detergent right on top. Her smile faded, as she knew she didn’t have it in her to hurt anyone. Maybe she Could just start again. She wouldn’t be here forever, after all. She stopped rubbing her belly and coughed some. She thought of the other women who came here “knocked up” as they said, and what they did to take care of things. She’d seen births in prison – it was heinous, and how could she be expected to survive that? What chance could she ever have of her dream wedding? Wasn’t she fat enough as it is? Maybe there was a way. She could muster up the ability to remove it. She could do it herself, when no one was looking. When she read her scrapbooks…in the dark would be hard, but she could do it. Her mother would be proud that she didn’t turn into a whore. She could go home again, and they would love her, and He would be sorry he ever messed with her. Against the chug chug lugging sound of the warm dryers behind her, she felt a kick. Mary Alice ignored this, as she would ignore all the insults that would come her way. She’d be happy as punch, a lady, a wife. A mother, but not without her wedding, no way. This was just a minor detour. She’d get out of this. She had the tools. The image of her mother, slipping through the powdery pre-Christmas snow in her bathrobe and practically burying that evil tube of whore red lipstick at the bottom of the trash played over and over in her mind, while Mary Alice ceased her rubbing removed her hand from her belly and went to work on her already torn cuticles, on the left hand, voracious like a beast who hadn’t eaten in days…the dryers circling behind her, static electric and warm to the touch.

~ M. Lucia