Never Turn Away

by Christine Holmstrom

          “Come here, Marilyn, let’s look in this window.” Wedged between an untrimmed bush and the home’s front wall, I’d motioned to my friend, inviting her to join me. Pressing my face against the glass, I peered inside.

Drat. It was the kitchen.

          From what I’d read in the LA Herald Examiner a few days ago, a man had murdered his wife, then his four children as they slept, right here in our placid suburban enclave. Afterwards, he’d killed himself.

          “What’s there?” Marilyn whispered, glancing backwards to see if any of the neighbors had noticed us.

“Just a messy table.” It sat in the middle of the kitchen, a butter dish near the edge, the contents slumping onto scuffed wood, victim of the valley’s summer heat.

No blood here.

We’d have to find the bedrooms where the kids were stabbed.

Marilyn and I were both twelve. Curious. Or maybe it was mostly me. Did I believe that viewing the crime scene would answer the unspoken question—why? The question had taunted me from when I could first read newspaper stories about strangled starlets, missing children, and trussed bodies found in steamer trunks.

Horrible as these neighborhood murders were, they provided the most excitement we’d known in quiet Canoga Park. If we’d thought to examine our motives, Marilyn and I likely would’ve recalled how drivers slow and stare, braking to look across the highway at smashed vehicles, the corpses—covered in blankets—lying on a sloping hillside.

“The bedrooms must be in the back.” Freeing myself from the clasp of the unruly shrub, I’d surveyed our surroundings. A tall wood fence encircled the sides and back of the home—a locked gate the only access.

“Wait, what’s that?” Marilyn pointed to the large rust-red stain that blossomed over the asphalt driveway leading to the two-car garage.

Could it be blood? I stopped, transfixed. Was this where the father committed suicide?

I always wanted to know more. Maybe that curiosity is part of the reason that I’d ended up as a correctional officer— a prison guard—at San Quentin decades later.

After walking through the heavy iron gates into the prison yard, I witnessed things that can never be erased from memory. There is no turning away.

As a “fish cop”—a new correctional officer—I was frightened yet mesmerized by stories of staff murders. During new officer orientation, Sgt. “Flip” Fernandez recounted how he’d been the first to find the body of Officer Richard Ochoa in the prison laundry back in ’76. “You couldn’t even recognize him. He didn’t have no face—it was hamburger.”

“So why would someone kill him?” I wanted to know.

“Not sure. Ochoa was well liked.”

“What happened?”

“Well, my guess is that Ochoa stumbled onto a drug deal.” Fernandez frowned. “The convicts must’ve panicked. Grabbed a weightlifting bar and…”

I held my breath, trying not to imagine a man without a face, the torn and battered flesh, the splintered nose, bits of pink tissue splattering his khaki uniform shirt, the pooling blood…

It could be any of us; could be me. Being a good cop wouldn’t save you.

During my first years at San Quentin, the prison was a war zone. Alarms screeching, whistles blaring daily. Shouts of “shots on the yard” as gun rail officers fired warning rounds or tried to stop a knife-wielding assailant with a bullet. Then the piercing wail of an ambulance racing down Sir Francis Drake Blvd to deliver the wounded and dying to Marin General.

Once, stepping out of the housing unit to respond to the blare of whistles, I’d flattened myself against the wall as four officers ran past, a badly injured prisoner on their gurney—his forehead split open, brain matter exposed.

Try as I might, I cannot erase certain scenes. Like this one: It was late morning—a cold day. There’d been another stabbing. I needed to ID the victim and sign the Warden’s Check-out Order prior to transport. The inmate lay naked, except for his boxer shorts, in the prison’s battered old ambulance. His pale belly heaved; his breath labored. Thin crimson stripes pierced his abdomen—the marks left by repeated stab wounds. Unaware of me, his eyes remained fixed on the vehicle’s gray metal ceiling. He was my age, handsome—no tattoos or gang symbols on his bare skin. Except for his longish hair, he reminded me of a man I’d once dated. I examined the ID photo that the gate officer had handed me, verified the match. Would the prisoner ever need it again?

There are many ways to die in prison besides assault—accidental deaths from bad “pruno” laced with wood alcohol or a suicide gesture gone wrong.

Or miscalculation. Like the two inmates in Badger Section.

Walking through the sally port—the prison’s double-gated entry—I’d nearly bumped into a lieutenant from the Investigations Unit. In his hand he’d held a few eight by ten photos. The bright colors drew my eyes.

“What are those?” Curious, I’d pointed.

“Evidence.” He fanned the glossies like playing cards. “Remember the cell fire last week?”

I’d heard about it. Late one night two prisoners had set fire to a blanket tied on the bars of their shared cell. Nothing especially unusual, although most convicts simply pushed a pile of burning garbage onto the tier. Inmates started tier fires when they were angry or drunk or just for the hell of it. The gun rail officer yelled at them to put out the fire. They’d ignored him. By the time another cop got to the cell with a fire extinguisher, the flames had spread. Their TV, also attached to the bars, ignited, exploding in a shower of sparks shooting across the cell. Decades of paint began to burn, the walls a flaming oven. By then the convicts were screaming, hurling water at the conflagration, plunging their heads into the toilet bowl. Some cops unfurled the unit fire hose from its red painted box and lugged it up two flights of stairs then dragged it down the tier towards the cell. It proved too short. Other cops were already on the tier, aiming fire extinguishers at the blaze without success. Intense heat had expanded the cell door, jamming it shut.

“No way could we unlock the door,” one of the cops later said. “It was the frickin’ Towering Inferno.”

I held out my hand for the photos. At first, I thought I was looking at an enlarged shot of two overcooked hot dogs—the pink skin splitting sideways—tattooed with charcoal bits. Then I noticed the blackened bunk bed and realized what I was seeing.

There was no pleasure in these sights—only a slight salve for the curiosity that had been itching since my childhood.

Friends sometimes asked why I kept working at the prison. Many reasons—the adrenaline high, the glory and notoriety of being a female correctional officer, the pay, promotional opportunities…

Although I could never erase what I witnessed during my time at San Quentin, I’d chosen not to turn away either.

There was too much to see.

Christine Holmstrom’s work has been published in Bernie Siegel’s book, Faith, Hope, and Healing. Her nonfiction has been published or is forthcoming in Dime Show Review, Gulf Stream, The Gravel, Jet Fuel Review, The MacGuffin, The Penmen Review, Rougarou,Streetlight Magazine, Switchback, Stonecoast Review, Summerset Review, Two Cities Review, and others. After surviving riots, an armed escape and a death threat while working at San Quentin prison, she finally had the good sense to retire. Christine is now working on a memoir about her prison years.

Cutting Words

by Tracy Youngblom

         

          You know, he begins, an older person or someone in worse physical condition wouldn't have survived.

          Yes? I say, hesitant to pursue this line of thinking.

          It's better that it happened to me. I was strong and in good shape, so I didn't die. Someone else would have died.

We are seated in the waiting area of his therapist in vinyl armchairs, hemmed in by a door on one side and a small water cooler and white-noise machine on the other. We have barely made it up the stairs.

You sound like you’re saying you’re glad it happened to you? This is supposed to sound neutral, but it comes out as a question.      

As soon as we’d entered the building, I'd remembered clearly: no elevator. I ought to have remembered, since Dan had been my sons’ therapist for years; he’d saved at least one of their lives. Defeated, I pushed Elias in his wheelchair to the foot of the stairs.

          Can we do this? I asked. Do you want to reschedule?

I felt worse than stupid: barely two months post-accident, and it was my idea to start therapy. Now I'd done it. He'd been ready to talk, but now we had no way to get to the second floor. He'd been taking a few steps at a time from his bed to a chair in his hospital room, but after months in bed, he had little strength to spare. I had introduced an impossibility.

          No, I'll just use the stairs.

          I helped him stand and pivot, then lower his body backward onto the lowest step. He hoisted himself upward with his arms, pushing off his stronger right leg, one painful step at a time. I climbed behind, carrying the collapsed chair.

          We made it—he made it. Now we sit chatting, waiting for the appointment. We have no life outside recovery, so we discuss the accident and its aftermath.

          He is upbeat today; maybe the triumph of the stairs. We are recalling the details of his salvation at the hands of the many, the impeccable timing of it all. The first bystanders on the scene (one of them an EMT) removed the windshield so his bleeding would slow down in the brisk March air; the First Responders extracted him from the car in less than 20 minutes; the helicopter transport the State Trooper had called was waiting. Everything lined up perfectly. Maybe the miracle was simple: his life was saved by the timing.

Besides miracles, I am always aware of a severe irony: the drunk driver who ran into my son head-on escaped unscathed. She was on a joy-ride, going the wrong direction on the freeway, at 2:00 in the afternoon. Her injuries were minor: a broken ankle (a lifetime of addiction?).

It’s true he survived when he shouldn’t have, but recently we learned he was not so lucky; because of the force of the impact and the consequent swelling, he has been struck blind.

          I am grateful for his life, but when he suggests it was better for him to have been hit than someone else, the conversation turns serious.

           That’s hard for me to hear.

          I know.

This honesty and get-to-the-truth-fearlessly tone is one gift in the midst of much challenge. We have thrillingly deep, intimate conversations almost every day—every parent’s dream. But I am not thrilled to hear this.

          Then the door opens, and I wheel him in and wait in the white noise until the session is over and he can sit facing forward this time and bump down the stairs to my waiting car (down is much easier, we discover).

          Later I tell myself, forcefully, that I cannot be expected to be glad my son was in this accident. I cannot be expected to accept his conclusion, on top of everything else I’m expected to accept. I tell it to myself so vehemently, it almost sounds like I’m telling someone else, like God.

More than two years post-accident, Elias is himself full-force: tough, funny, uncompromising. He lives alone, brooks no objection. We don’t have daily interactions—more like weekly. I have had to abandon the worries that used to keep me up at night, have had to ward off vivid fears: of fire, of burglars, of knives and guns, of hit-and-runs, of evil-intentioned strangers. Of another unexpected call, this time the death of me (him).

I think I have done well and deserve some recognition. My son thinks otherwise. Or, he doesn’t think of me that way—as a stand-up, an example. Someone to praise, protect.

Maybe that’s why today, as we are driving, talking as we often do about the arc of this strange experience, he does it again: stops my heart with his casual observations.

I think I’m a different person since the accident.

I cringe; I think I know where this is going. Sensing my doubt, he gives a few general examples: less arrogant, more grateful.

Well, you don’t know what would have happened without the accident, I offer. Probably you would have turned out the same.

No, he says, certain. No, I’m better. I’ve turned out better.

Do you mean you needed to change? And there wasn’t any other way?

Now it’s his turn to hesitate.

I’ve grown up, he says. I’m less self-involved. Less. . . his voice trails off.

I don’t push it, though I want to stamp out this line of thinking, stop this smoldering mess before it spreads, engulfs both of us. I am not as shocked as I was two years ago, however, hearing him suggest it was better that this accident happened to him. Now he’s just pondering unforeseen benefits. I don’t like the implications, though I understand his eagerness to express gratitude for this life he’s been given.

But I am still surprised at the suggestion that this was our Fate. I don’t accept it with the brightest face possible. He can’t see my face, so he doesn’t know that I grimace often, my eyes cloud with mist, that I shake my head sadly, almost unbidden.

It’s the damn accompanying emotions that always stymy me. They lurk under my sunny surface, threaten to erupt in bouts of cursing: Jesus. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ Almighty.

Recently, I confessed to Elias that I swear more—too much—these days.

What do you say? he asked.

I told him, and he laughed.

Mom, that’s not swearing. If you’re going to swear, make it count.

I stay quiet in the car, listening. I can see he’s also grappling with emotions, half-surprised at these insights that are just words—but words, words: all we have to invoke peace, to ward off fury and fear.

To pray, if we choose.

Tracy Youngblom earned an MA in English and an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College. She has published three books of poems, most recently One Bird a Day (2018), along with essays and fiction. Her individual poems, stories, and essays have been published in journals including Shenandoah, Wallace Stevens Journal, Big Muddy, Briar Cliff Review, Potomac Review, Cumberland River Review, Cortland Review, Ruminate, Foliate Oak, St. Katherine's Review, Westview, and many other places. Her work has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives and works near Minneapolis, teaching English at a community college and working with adult writers in the community.