Ohio State Prison - It's A Boy! (Part 7)

Mary Alice could hardly contain herself. All the little sparrows that sang in her broad shaped heart were a flutter, and not only soaring around her sinewy tree branches and houses of hopes and thoughts, but announcing the coming gala, in her honor as she always knew it would be. Mary Alice herself could barely keep still for the anticipation. The prison would have a moment wherein the breath that it breathed – that it was allowed to breathe – would be relaxed, unfettered by stress, or pain or destitute feeling. Everyone would finally come together as one scattered, but whole happy family.

There they all were, come to celebrate the birth of her baby. She had thought it would take place in the sunny summer months, like the perfect wedding that she still had to plan. She hadn’t been eating as much as the other women at dinner time – she knew the stories her mother used to tell her about fitting into your wedding dress. She used to try on her mother’s when she would be cleaning downstairs, but even as a growing ten year old, it just wouldn’t fit. Her mother had pretty much consigned herself to purposefully eating “like a bird” and would glow from pale cheeked ear to ear every time a guest in the house would tell her mother this, and/or compliment her tiny waistline. The thing was, birds looked plumper than her mother did. She used to bleach the already very light brown hair on her cheeks, which seemed to grow in volume over the years. She never explained why, but made sure to drill it into Mary Alice that a lady doesn’t eat too much, and only loose women had wide hips. It puts notions in men’s heads that proper ladies and respectful wives didn’t abide by. Mary Alice had done her best to fulfill this prophecy and even now, as she was about to give birth, she tried her absolute best to keep her weight down, but she happened to be beset (her mother’s idea of the “opposite of blessed”) with her father’s mother’s wide hips. “Child bearing?”, her mother would say. “You want to give birth, not suffocate the poor thing”. So it hadn’t worked as well as she would have liked, but there was a “big” woman or two in the prison that thought she was a little darling. They acted really strange towards her, licking their lips and grabbing crudely at their own oversized, pillow like chests. They scared her a little bit, but a compliment, after all, is a compliment. They loomed over her when they said anything to her, reiterating the monikers they created for her, there stuck in the laundry, their “little knocked up darling” or “darling miss firestarter”. They didn’t understand. The thoughts of anyone understanding floated far from her mind as she passed the cells, the work rooms, the kitchen, its dirty smell of old sponges and rancid garbage that should have been thrown away days ago. He would be sorry, and so would her parents.

They led her into the recreation room, and it was decorated from head to toe in little blue paper mache rattles and words “It’s A Boy” etc. There was food, which for once looked somewhat decent, though her stomach hadn’t been right and she couldn’t bring herself to eat much. There were the big women, leering and overstuffing their plates with spaghetti from a can (though one of the better varieties). The guards actually looked pleasant, and calmer, yet stumbling in their relaxed eyesight over their weighted down shoulders and grey, heavy feet. Making sure the behaviour wasn’t too raucous or out of control. They knew how this set of women could get. It wasn’t just the women – the younger and less dangerous of the male prisoners were all allowed in. It was like some kind of dream – not the dream Mary Alice had hoped for – there was no church, no betrothed to see her through, but she already had taken steps to changing all that. She had been preparing for this party ever since she found out about the baby, shortly after she got to prison. The food was scattered, but plentiful. The bright, peppermint-orange winter sun shone in through the barred windows, casting down onto everyone’s faces with warmth and its markings. She wanted to tell the young boys who were sipping some kind of hustled, stolen liquor in their cups to quit it. They were laughing too loud and saying mean things, which her ears didn’t want to hear. There was the big fellow, who minded his own business, when the men’s version of the big chested ladies would bother him. He looked forlorn, but seemed to stuff his face wildly, as if his life depended on it. One of the older male guards who was sent in to watch the men’s side of things huffed and stood at the back, looking as if he was simultaneously keeping an eye out on everyone and taking a nap on the inside of his saggy pupils. Little Frederick stood near the snack foods, delicately taking one at a time and smiling at some of the other guys. He was so slender, and popular – she wished she knew his secret. He would have probably made a good husband, but she had to take care of This thing, and Then That thing. Her mother would have been proud. She had not been in her right mind when she had hung up on Mary Alice on that blistery day from jail, when she had called her mother, pleading for her to pay the bail and let her come home. “There Is no home for you. You destroyed it forever!” “And, you are the reason your father left”. That one hurt her the most. There was some kind of numb, dull aching rage in her bones on the day she piled up all the dresses and lit them bright as the orange light now, which shone into her. She felt blessed, finally. There was, however, still some agitation. Some of the lewder ones were high fiving across the other side of her party and laughing. She always thought anyone laughing around her, meant it was About her. She felt the same feeling, as the pain came up and down her thighs. No, she would see this party out. It was in her honor!

Down near the old, empty plastic filing cabinets which were left in the rec room for nowhere else to go, sat Francesca, haggard from the drugs she didn’t know anyone knew about (but Mary Alice had seen her sneaking them around, and knew of her affinity for some, well, most of the guards who procured them for her), eyeballing the crowd and staring daggers at little Frankie. You would think she was in love with him. Frankie just smiled back with a very lovely wave, one which seemed kind of lady like to Mary Alice. Her mother would have loved Frankie- all cordialities, soft voice and proper airs. Then there was a row of women sitting – the Talkers, they were called. They didn’t do much, were all known for their often dull conversations about their men, their kids from different men, their only topics of said conversation…they knitted whole scarves, gloves and socks with those mostly off, knotted and endlessly frustrated but seemingly acceptable onslaughts of words. She wished those words turned into actual knitting, as Mary Alice was sure to need some baby boots and blankets (there were no gifts piled up, as she had hoped, but she knew some things were an impossibility even in prison). Annemarie had huge hips – Mary Alice didn’t like her much, she had bad skin and looked like a waitress in a truck stop or something like that. One was super skinny, with red stringy hair, and looked like a ten year old boy. She would always say the same phrase no matter what was spoken to her: “you’re too funny”. Mary Alice heard her say it about a hundred times in the months she had been here. There was never a change in tone, or inflection or volume. Did she mean it every single time or was she thinking something awful in her pale little head? She probably thought Mary Alice shouldn’t have gained so much weight when pregnant. Mary Alice’s heart beat faster at this, and she was less able to contain the pain that was swirling inside her belly, it was beginning to gain ground, so she had to make this fast. Then there was Manuela, who had long, bright nails and tried to eat a sandwich while staring off at the blank, opposite wall. She loved to say the words “dime a dozen” while snapping her fingers, so much so that Mary Alice thought she might as well have gotten the words written on her forehead. She sounded like a a waitress in a bad Mexican restaurant and looked like the sandwich she was eating made her as happy as just about anything else would. Then, the guards snickered, and the walls shook.

Mary Alice was taken aback, and then fell back- almost fainting, as the blood trees inside her shot up to the sky which pounded at her weak heart. There was blood all over her hands, and between her legs. The metal on the ground made a shrieking noise as it cornered into the infirmary. Mary Alice opened her eyes just fast enough to see the swish of the empty rec room as they swept past. It didn’t have a table set up with food, or any people, and the sun wasn’t even shining today. Not even the sun came to the party, it seemed. It didn’t matter. The drugs had made their way in and she could see them all standing around her – shouting and chaos and low lids, and her mother, standing there holding up the tiny, narrow wedding dress that Mary Alice would now fit into! She felt a sharp tug at her insides, and tasted pennies in her mouth. She used to lick her wounds as a child, when the neighborhood kids would hit her with sticks in the forest. She liked the taste, and it felt warming, like a cup of soup coating her throat. All the sharpness turned sour, and then like a waterfall’s gush lifted her up with a thud – she couldn’t understand why the thud noise when it was up, up, up she was going. Away from this place, and those tacky, big hipped, knitting, sandwich eating women and those rough and girl like men, away from the jeers and stares and whispers about her. Her parents, even him, the one who made all this happen to her, they maybe had come to get her at the party and bring her safely home – the home was fine now, not lit up, not destroyed. Her father had returned, and the boy wanted to marry her, just like he once promised her. Her lips were the colour of the red lipstick that her mother had warned her about. It was ok, though. It didn’t matter anymore. When they wheeled Mary Alice and her sterile sheet (she had probably washed, dried and folded herself, with all the care she could muster) back downstairs to the morgue, a tiny pouch at her side, both silent, both bloodless, all she could hear in the shadows that followed was the hum of the dryers again (someone else was in charge of them now), the humming of Frankie mid-step in heading once again to see the warden as he did every Friday evening, and the cackle of one or two nameless, faceless women – happy as sows chewing on freshly painted grass, echoing in the near distance of the tall, reflecting halls. Like mirrors, they shone back into Mary Alice and soaked heavy into her clean white sheet, as the double doors made a small, fractured thud behind her.

M. Lucia