Glad you called

No, not me. If you called, I’d cry or throw up after watching it ring. There’s so much room for misunderstanding in a text. With a voice on the other line you can hear so much. Inflection. You’d be surprised of the range you’ve never heard of that man on screen. I was a teenager. He called and asked if I wanted to get high. Throat pinched high pitch cry. I didn’t want to answer at all. I told my mom. I lost my cell phone. We lost our computer. He knew where we lived. Eventually a cop dropped him off, said I was his next of kin. I thought of our computer corner. Where I’d look up words I didn’t recognize in the books I read. Kin usually meant family.

It’s a form you fill out when you get booked. Essentially it’s your emergency contact. I didn’t remember my mom’s phone number. I could only remember Selene’s. I was still upset about Utah so I didn’t put a name or a number. They urged me to put someone. I left it blank. I should have left the visitation roster blank too, besides my brother. I filled in every possible position. Even though 9/10 I had no way of reaching them. It’s a lot of paper work on their end. Then there’s no way of reaching them on your end unless you memorize all your phone numbers.

I was assaulted in my bed. She dislocated my jaw. I got up, told the CO and showed him my bloody lip. My jaw already back in place, but still sore. The next day I was arrested, in prison. They “charged” me for lying & instigating a fight. They arrested her too. They watched the wrong time stamp on the surveillance video. Either way, their policy is to put you in, what they call, the hole. After being marched in hand cuffs on campus to the nurse, mental health building to my new cell in Arn 4, I lay behind my lacked cell door. Thankful for the barrier between myself and all but one other inmate. I hear the CO’s phone ring. It’s late at night. My jaw is sore still. He puts it on speaker. I hear my sister’s familiar voice, “I was calling to see who hit my sister.”

Guynes. African American female. She wasn’t the one who was charged with murdering her 7 year old whose body was found stuck to the mattress, starved to death. Someone got confused with another black woman. I sat at breakfast across from a white woman who was squatting at an abandoned property, she got charged with trespassing. She sang to the two sharing the table with us “I don’t give a fuck about you or anything that you do.” The three black women around us started an argument about race. She couldn’t quote that song because the artist was black. Those are the rules, apparently. This was after she promised me a dollar for my peanut butter. I never ate it. I quit that in county. It’s sticky. It makes you constipated. Yet the women are obsessed with it. It’s was a stupid argument. Now everyone around us was chiming in. Then chimed in Guynes. I matched that face with the extreme child neglect and the second she tried to interject, that’s when I cut her off. You’re fucking sick. That’s what I said to her. Later that morning the woman who told me the story was like, oh no it’s thaaat black girl. 😒🙄 Great… Weeks went by. I was on crutches from the combination of getting up on the top bunk & playing basketball too hard. My MCL was acting up. So I’m on my bottom bunk, the lights are off and the women are fighting over the fans being on or off. I’m team on. Tiffany Guynes is team off. Multiple people are turning them back on, okay. Tiffany is the only bitch who keeps getting up and turning the switch off. Now she’s being loud about it threatening to beat someone up if they keep turning them on, she’s sick she said. Well yeah I did agree with that, but now I’ve got now idea what you’re in for. I’m just mad because I’m trying to sleep and this arguing will go on for hours. So I say to no one in particular, but meant for everyone “Oh my god please don’t start!” She stopped in her tracks, backed up and came into my cubicle. One sleeping, the other two in the bathroom. Threatened to slap me until she hit me with her closed heel of her left hand. I’m tucked in. Took it straight to the jaw. Like I want another 6 months. Eventually she threatens me again. A grudge over a ceiling fan, I mean really. Whenever women heard I got hit their first question was always the same, “was she black?”

Don’t call me. I have nothing to say to you. Too much to say maybe but knowing it’ll have no impact on reality so there’s no use in wasting my breath.