Sydni Ellis

I haven’t made this drive in ten years but it’s all coming back to me.  Especially “Bauchet Street”, the name.  I always thought that was a funny street for a jail to be on.  Boo-shay, with the French accent.  Someone tells you they’re going to Bauchet Street and you imagine a quaint little street in France where beautiful women sit drinking cappacino at outdoor cafes.  But life’s not a fantasy on Bauchet Street, not even close.  This is as real as it gets.

I’m thinking things haven’t changed much as I drive into the parking lot across the street from the Twin Towers,  There’s Tower One and Tower Two and I don’t know which one my brother is in, but I’ll figure that out in a minute, I’ll ask someone where I should go.  The sign says it’s six bucks to park, pay in advance, so as I drive into the lot I give the attendant two fives and he starts to wave me through but then he says oh wait a minute, and presses four singles into my hand.

So I pull in the lot and it’s all coming back to me, I remember this place, oh yeah, those steps over there, I remember those.  I’ve got fifty bucks in my back pocket and Jamie’s booking number on a piece of notebook paper clenched in my hand.  I keep putting it in different places: my coat pocket, my purse, the dashboard, picking it up and putting it down.  I need this, I keep thinking.  I don’t want to lose this.  And my driver’s licence, gotta have that, too.  That’s in my wallet, I’ll keep it there for now.  It’s almost eight-fifteen and there’s already a line outside the jail, visitors are standing in the rain waiting to get in.      

* * *  

My brother killed someone twelve years ago and since then he’s mostly been in jails and mental institutions.  The guy he killed was either a respectable man with a pretigious job and an expensive, fluffy dog, or he was a scumbag who lured boys into cars and tried to make them do shit they didn’t want to do.  Maybe he was both.  But my brother didn’t have two selves, he only had one, and his self had a knife in his pocket so when the respectable man pulled out his dick Jamie pulled out his knife and stabbed the man twenty-seven times.  When it was over Jamie ran back to the shitbag motel he’d been staying in since his girlfriend kicked him out and he picked up his dog — a Doberman Pincher named Terminator who liked Jack Wagner music — and came to see me.  He woke me up that morning, he was standing on the front lawn with his dog, crying and shaking.  I did something bad, he said.  I did something real bad.  I remember thinking, fuck, maybe he knocked over a 7-11 or something, maybe he really messed up this time.  It wasn’t until we were in my car that he told me, I killed someone.  I think he’s dead, he’s gotta be dead, after what I did to him.  Yeah, I think he’s probably dead… It was two days after Christmas and people still had decorations on their lawns, blinking lights and waving Santas and snow-covered divinity scenes.  I kept my eyes fixed on them as I drove, trying not to listen.  There’s a lot of blood when you kill someone, he was saying.  There’s more blood than you think.

I haven’t spoken to my brother in about a week.  He doesn’t call before a visit, and Mom says that’s because he’s afraid if he calls we might try to get out of it.  We might say ”Oh, I’m sorry I can’t make it this week after all.”  If he doesn’t call we have to come, because it would be rude to just not show up without canceling first.          

Now I have to figure out which tower he’s in.  Two has a pretty long line outside so I stand by the pay phones and scan the people waiting to get in. There are a lot of gangbanger types: guys with shaved heads and wifebeater t-shirts.  Pretty latina girls with long kinky hair and shaved eyebrows; their real ones replaced by thin lines drawn unnaturally high on their foreheads.  They look like wayward Harlequin dolls.  I’m about to ask someone if I’m in the right place when I notice a sign that reads “Inmate Information” with a phone number  — cool, just what I need.  I put two quarters in the phone and dial, and a voice tells me all operators are currently busy but to please remain on the line.  It doesn’t say my call is very important, but there is some waiting music: I Second That Emotion by the Miracles.  Finally I hear a series of clicks followed by a busy signal and I know I’ve been disconnected, but I keep waiting until a voice says if you would like to make a call please hang up and dial again.  “Motherfucker,” I say loud enough for people to hear, but nobody turns to look at me.

* * *

I visited my father in New York back when Jamie first started serving his time.  We’d sat on the floor in his apartment eating cold pizza from the box and looking through a stack of court documents.  My father was a private investigator and he was able to obtain,” as he would say, the police photographs, witness statements and the autopsy report from my brother’s case.

I noticed a death certificate sticking out from the pile and picked it up.  I already knew the dead man’s name, that he was a homosexual, older than my brother, successful in his field, but now I wanted to know more.  What strange link existed between the two doomed strangers, one of whom I used to play hide and seek with?  How did fate decide that pictures of this rich man’s corpse would end up scattered on the floor of a shitty walk up apartment in New York City at ten o’clock on a Sunday night?

Name:   Donald Stuart Mooring
Sex:       Male
Age:       42
Weight:  200
Manner of Death:  Homicide

I stared at the words, ready to face my brother’s victim.  I’d kept him out of my mind for months, refusing to acknowledge his loss or grieve for anyone’s pain but Jamie’s.  But I had so many questions.

Why did my brother do this to you?  Did you deserve it?
Nobody deserves this, not this…
Jesus, I’m sorry…  I’m so sorry.

“Brace yourself,” my father said, and he began handing me pictures of the crime scene.  I took them and for the first time saw what Jamie had described to me that morning in my car.  One was a close up of the man’s bloody face, his eyes and mouth ghoulishly slack, deep gashes visible on the left side of his head.  Another showed his lifeless body hanging out of his car, legs grotesquely twisted, feet barely touching the blood-soaked ground.  As my mind struggled to fill in the blanks I envisioned my brother’s face contorted with rage, raising a knife above his head.

“Look at this,” my father said, passing me a photograph of bloody footprints.

“What?” I said, but I already knew what was coming. 

“These footprints come from a size ten sneaker.  Your brother wears a 12.”  Dad took a long drag on his unfiltered cigarette and stared hard at the photo, his finger tracing the outline of the footprint.

“He didn’t do it,” he said.  “He’s covering up for someone.”

We’d had this conversation before.

“Dad,” I said, “he came to me right after it happened, he told me — ”

“He ‘told‘ you — don’t be an idiot!” he yelled, snatching the picture out of my hand.  “What did he tell you?  He didn’t tell you anything! Come on, huh?”

“He told me he did it.  He was crying and he said he did it.”

My father shook his head in disgust.  “And you’d rather believe he’s a murderer than a liar?” he asked.  “What kind of sister are you?”

There was another picture in the stack; the dead man as he was in life, his fluffy dog sitting on his lap.  He was looking directly into the camera and smiling; maybe even laughing.  I knew Jamie had seen this picture because he mentioned it to me afterwards in one of our phone conversations, he sounded a little shaken up.  I remembered it because it was the only time I’d heard Jamie mention the dead man with anything that sounded like regret.

“I didn’t know he had a dog,” he’d said.

* * *

I walk up to a dark skinned black man in a stained blue t-shirt and ask where I can find my brother.  Tower One is for the men, he says. you go that way.  A heavily tattooed Hispanic man with a shaved head and an open flannel shirt follows behind me saying, the way this place is designed, you gotta be a moron to figure it out.  But I find Tower One and get in line behind two middle aged Caucasian women with carefully coiffed hair.  One of them is wearing a cheerful pink sweatshirt with big red polka-dots, the other looks like Sally Jesse Raphael in an embroidered vest and less expensive glasses.  Someone’s aunt, someone’s mom.  They look like they should be home serving breakfast in some idyllic cozy kitchen, pouring maple syrup on someone’s pancakes.  Maybe they did do that, until something went wrong.  Now they’d spend their Sundays on line on Bauchet Street trying to look like they don’t belong here.  As I take my place in line I can’t help but notice that black people seem far less unnerved than whites about this place.  Where whites tense up and refuse to make eye contact with each other or anyone else, black people are warm, friendly, their dignity untainted by the county jail scene.  We’ve been going through this shit forever, their faces seem to say.  It’s just another part of life, like death and taxes.

The bald guy in the flannel shirt is in line behind me, talking to someone about his son.

“He was just hanging around with the wrong crowd, and now he’s in prison for eight years,” he says, struggling to control his outrage.  “Hey, I’m not saying he didn’t have no trouble before — every kid has trouble, okay?  But eight years? Plus, they gave him two strikes on the same case!  I mean, isn’t there some kind of law — can they do that?”

Everyone on line is talking to someone, rolling their eyes, shaking their heads, high-fiving each other in solidarity, or offering a consolatory pat on the back.  This is the first time all week I’ve overheard casual conversations that don’t include the word “Enron,” but there’s still plenty of talk about corruption.  Society is corrupt, the judicial system is corrupt, the government is corrupt, and something’s gotta be done about it, ’cause it’s no goddamned fair.  Everyone on line at Tower One, Black and White, Asian and Hispanic, young and old, can agree on that much.

* * *

“What the hell is Terminator doing here?

My mother was furious when she came home from work to find my brother’s dog sitting on her couch, his massive paws scratching at the upholstery.

Jamie was in a motel in Lomita.  I’d given him enough money to stay for a week.  It took everything I’d made onstage the night before, and now I was broke.  He’d called me about six times already, with requests for more money, more food, someone to listen.  He asked me to come by when I got off work and I said I wouldn’t be off until two in the morning but he said that was fine.  I need someone to talk to, he said.  It was two days after Christmas and someone was dead, and somewhere a family was wondering how did this happen, what kind of monster would do this?  My nerves were shot, my head filled with images of gore and blood and faceless, crying relatives.  I didn’t want any of it to be real, but now my mother was standing in the dining room lighting a cigarette and demanding answers.

“He knows he can’t leave his dog here! Where is he?”

“He can’t get the dog right now,” I tell her.

“He better get the goddamned dog!”

“Well he can’t Mom, okay? So shut up, just please shut up…”  I sat down and covered my face with my hands, pressing them against my eyes until the darkness turned to swirling colors.  When I looked up again my mother was starting at me, waiting.     

“What the hell is going on? What aren’t you telling me?” She didn’t sound worried, she’d stopped worrying a long time ago.  These days she was merely fed up.

“Something bad has happened,” I said.

“So what else is new?” she asked dismissively.  She walked into the kitchen, her high heels snapping against the linoleum.  “What, was he evicted again?”

I was exhausted from trying not to cry, and as anguished sobs began to escape me, my mother’s expression turned from anger to surprise.

“Someone is dead,” I heard myself say.  I’d promised Jamie I wouldn’t tell, but like the tattling sister I’d always been I once again proved myself completely untrustworthy.

“What do you mean, ’someone is dead’? He killed someone?”  She stared at me, expressionless.  “Is that what you’re telling me? Is that why the dog is here?”

“I don’t know for sure if the guy is dead,” I said, trying to compose myself.  “It was in Hollywood last night, some guy in a car…”

“Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ…” Mom kept saying.  “Jesus Christ.”

“I want to take him to a mental hospital,” I told her.  “I think he’s really sick.”

“You can’t take Jamie to a hospital, he’ll never go.”  She was lighting another cigarette and her hands were shaking.

“Then I’ll have to drive him to Mexico or something.”

She thought for a minute and then shook her head.  “He might be lying,” she said.  “Remember when he made up that story about having cancer so we’d give him money? He lies, you know that.”  Her arms were folded, her cigarette dangling under her elbow as she considered the possibilities.  I glanced over at Terminator, who was shoving his snout between the couch pillows, looking for crumbs.  I realized I hadn’t fed him all day.

“We have to call the authorities,” my mother said, trying to take control of the matter.  “Let’s call the police and ask them if there was a murder last night, and then we’ll know if he’s lying or not.”

“And then what?” I asked.  “Am I supposed to turn him in?”

“Someone might be dead,” she reminded me.  “If he killed someone, he needs help.  He needs to be off the streets.”  For Mom, it was as simple as that.  “Let me call the police and see if someone was killed last night.  If not, then you call your brother and tell him to come get his dog.  Deal?”

I know if I say yes, it’s all over.  I know the guy is really dead, and no detective is going to answer our questions about an unsolved homicide and then just let us fade back into the woodwork.

* * *

He claimed he’d only wanted a ride home.  The man was a stranger to him, just a guy at the bar who’d offered to give him a ride and Jamie accepted.  Jamie gave the man his name and address in front of witnesses, told him what streets to take to get him there fastest.  He’d gone out to have a few drinks and figure out how to win back the girl he loved, he said, not to kill someone.   But he had a knife in his pocket, one his girlfriend had given him when she threw him out with nowhere to go.  “You may need this,” she’d said “Crazy shit happens in Hollywood.”  The man offering him the ride was even taller than my brother, a big guy.  Not someone you’d ideally choose as a victim, especially after a few drinks.  It just didn’t add up.  Jamie said he knew something was wrong when the man said he needed to stop by his own place first before taking Jamie home.  The man drove to a fancy condominium with an underground parking lot and when the security gates clanged shut behind them Jamie said he’d felt trapped. 

Nobody knows what happened next.  The D.A. said Jamie tried to rob the man and killed him during the struggle.  Jamie said the man told him that if he wanted that ride home, he’d have to earn it.  All that can be certain is that someone did something terrible; demanded something that had not been agreed to and wouldn’t take no for an answer.  Jamie reached for his knife and couldn’t stop — it was brutal, literal overkill.  I don’t know for sure who my brother was killing as he thrust his knife into the man’s head, whose blood he carried on his shirt as he ran in the early morning twilight, his fingers brown and sticky as he threw the knife and the man’s empty wallet into a dumpster.  But I have my suspicions.

* * *

He was charged with first degree murder and was only days from trial when it was discovered that lurking in the dead man’s past were accusations from other young men.  They hadn’t had knives, but they had stories to tell.  The D.A. feared the jury’s reaction and offered a plea bargain of manslaughter, eight to twelve years.  Jamie took it, and was ushered off to Pelican Bay, a level four maximum security state prison.  I wouldn’t see him again for eight years.

He wasn’t a model prisoner, and often ended up in solitary confinement, better known as the Hole.  We always knew when that happened because his phone calls would stop coming, and a week or two later the prison would send home a few boxes of his things; no personal items were allowed in the Hole. I’d rummage through them with a voyeur’s shame, knowing my brother was helpless to protect his privacy.  They usually contained the same things: prison issued pants and shirts, old photographs, Nirvana and Soundgarten CDs, half written letters to his girlfriend demanding to know why she wasn’t at home when he called.  Are you seeing someone? he had written, then crossed it out.  In one box was a birthday card he’d received from our father.  It was for Jamie’s 26th birthday, but it was the kind of card you’d give to a little kid.  On the front was a cartoon dog wearing a cowboy hat and chaps, holding a big, red balloon.  “Happy Birthday, Birthday Boy!” it read in big, cheeful letters.

My mother picked up the card and looked at it.

“Did you see this?” she asked.

“Yeah, kind of weird.” I said.

She closed the card and stared at it, then tossed it back into the box.

“Sick.” she said.   

* * * 

California State Department of Corrections considered him a parolee, not a patient, and as far as they were concerned he’d earned his right to be back on the streets.  The prison medical reports diagnosing him with everything from psychosis to schizophrenia were forgotten as his release date approached.  He’s fine, the prison warden told us.  If he needs help, he can get it on his own like anyone else.  It’s not our problem anymore.  For his part, Jamie was eager to reclaim his old life, to pick up where he’d left off.   He wanted to turn the clock back a decade, and face down his ghosts one by one.  He even returned to the bar where he’d met the dead man that night, walked in the front door and took a seat as if he’d never been away.  I can’t believe you have the nerve to come back here, the bartender told him, but Jamie kept going back, and after a while it was like old times again.  The biggest difference was the nickname given to him by the regulars — they now called him “the Killer.”

He was free for nearly a year before the ghosts caught up with him.

* * *

“I wanted to do a car chase for Mom, I know how she loves watching those car chases on TV.”

It was a year and a half since he’d been paroled, and Jamie and I were laying on the grass on the visitors’ grounds of the state mental institution.  His wrists were shackled to his waist belt, and he was trying to explain what happened.  He had been charged with kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon and if he was ever found competent enough to stand trial he’d be facing Life.

“I thought that would be cool,” he continued, slurring his words.  “She’d be sitting on the couch watching the car chase and then at the end when they pulled me out she’d be like ‘Hey, that’s my son!’”  He smiled, imagining how things might have been if they could just go right once in a while.

I was silent, just listening, staring up at the sky.  These visits were hard.  Jamie was heavily drugged and nodding off every few minutes, so I gave him my jacket to use as a pillow.  I stuck it under his head and propped him up a bit, he couldn’t get much leverage in the restraints, couldn’t really move at all.  As I brushed the hair out of his eyes, he reminded me that he had taken care of me when I was a baby, so now we were even.

“Tell Mom I’m sorry,” he said slowly, drifting off again.  “Tell her I tried.”

* * *

Visitors have to put all our stuff in lockers once we get inside Tower One; we’re not allowed to carry anything to the visiting room except our ID and locker key.  I shove all my stuff in a locker and take a seat and it isn’t long before my brother’s name is called.

“Five to the left,” the guard tells me as I approach the metal detector.  I have no idea what this means but I keep walking, hoping I’ll figure it out as I go.  I follow the visitors walking in front of me into a small elevator at the end of the hall.  I get off at level 5 and go left, into a small waiting room lined with booths.  I’m alone, but a voice from a loudspeaker says “He’ll be down shortly, ma’am,” and I realize they’re watching me on video.

He has a beard now, and walks slowly.  I start to cry when I see him, and he stares at me hard as he sits down on the other side of the bulletproof glass.  The guard snaps a handcuff to Jamie’s wrist and then to the seat so I can’t jump through the glass, Jamie mouths to me, gesturing at the glass with his free hand.  He picks up his phone and he’s smiling at me, I know he’s smiling because no one has cried for him in a long time.  He tells me he’s doing fine.  Does anyone bother you in here? I ask.  No, of course not, he says.  I’m fine.  Are you still on your meds? I ask.  Yeah, I take my meds three times a day — hey your hair got long, he says.  You look good.   He asks me about our father.  I wrote to him on September 11th, after the buildings went down, he says.  Did he write back? I ask.  Yeah, he says chuckling, shaking his head.  He wrote back to tell me that when the planes crashed into the buildings, a mirror broke in his house and fell right on his toe.  That his toe was bleeding real bad and there was blood all over the place.  The whole letter was about his toe.

I look at my brother and try to remember when we were kids, what it was like to live in the same house and take baths together.  I try but I can’t do it — they feel like someone else’s memories, someone else’s life.  I take in every inch of his face as I do each time I see him, hoping to commit him to memory, knowing one day it will be the last time I ever see him again.  Then I put my hand up to the glass and he presses his palm against the other side and we’re touching hands.  He smiles at me and says, “Don’t cry, sweetheart,” and I remember when I used to follow him around and copy him, how I used to get on his nerves, I wonder if I still sometimes do.  I promise him I’ll be back soon, next week maybe, but if not then definitely the week after.  I blow him a kiss goodbye and he pretends to catch it, and the guard comes and unlocks his wrist from the seat.  When I get to the elevator I turn around to wave one more time but it’s too late, he’s already gone.

A petite black woman is standing next to me in the crowded elevator, and she reminds me of a frightened bird.  She’s hugging herself like she’s cold, but when she catches my glance her smile is warm and sincere.  “I don’t know about you,” she says in a tiny voice, “but I wish I could bring my husband home with me right now.”  I want to hug her but I just smile and touch her arm as the elevator door opens and we walk back to the lockers to collect our wallets and purses and keys.

   

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 9th, 2007 at 6:22 pm and is filed under Short Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.