Firsts

There are so many firsts in life. The first time you have a baby, the first time you lose a tooth, the first time you stay out after school without permission and the first time you see a dead person or kill a live one.

The first time I did something I wasn't supposed to, it was Francie Vasquez leading me home by the hand but only to the corner where the old Atlantic Richfield sign towered over the fig tree next to old Mrs. Holland's house. We used to run errands for her (when we were old enough to tie our shoes). We'd simply knock on her door and knew if she needed sugar or milk, we could get a dime out of her. I barely remember her though or the way her house looked. The Atlantic Richfield sign far too important because it was on the Corner.
Some of us could climb up onto the billboard and walk on the platform where each month a man would come with a new sign to roll out onto the giant canvas, but I wasn't one of them. I was too chubby and couldn't do alot of the stuff everyone else could. I never did learn to swing on the pipes upside down without my hands but I could flip over it once or twice and backwards too. Everyone should grow up near a Corner like that because a corner is so many things...a place to sit and horse around, swing upside down on the pipes or to organize bike voyages.

In this case however, the Corner was the closest Francie Vasquez wanted to get to my mother whom she knew would be waiting for me with a Cancer Tree switch in one hand and a cigarette in the other. My mother had gone berserk looking for me that day. Kindergarten let out at 12:30 because I was in the 'morning class', a specific group of people that would stay the 'morning class' for the rest of our lives as opposed to the 'afternoon class', people who I can barely remember their names let alone their faces. That particular day I went to visit a sick friend. Isn't that what you are supposed to do? Donna Cole hadn't been to school for three days so I just took a right turn from the school stairs and headed on down to Brophy Avenue instead of going the 'back way' down Mayer like I was supposed to...past Mr. Williams fine gardens and Rosemary's old place, past the Peralta's and up my hill. Not this time. I headed up to 'no man's land' on Brophy where the rough families lived: Figueroas, Maestas, Carabeos and Vasquezes. I'm not really sure why they were considered dangerous up there because they always treated me as one of their own. Just like Francie did that day.

I was inside Donna's house. She wasn't really sick but her mom had been on a three day binge. She was living in a small rental under the Maestas place, two rooms and a kitchenette plus a water closet for the toilet. We played paper dolls for a while and watched some TV. It was a fine afternoon and the hours didn't really matter. They never matter when you are four years old. I was an early starter you know because my birthday was in November. I think it is the reason I'm always the short one in the group even if I'm taller than someone else. You just never get over starting life with five year olds when you are only four. Never get over it.

It must have been about four p.m. when Francie came banging on Donna's door. All she said is, "Meg, you are in BIG trouble. You've got to go home because your mom is looking all over for you." The look on her face, well, the look on her face. I knew she was right and anyways, she was already seven so she knew better than me what I had to do. I had to face facts. So Francie took me by the hand and Donna's face disappeared behind the dirty screen that was her lopsided front and back door. She held me by the shoulders as we stood on the Corner and looked me in the eye and said, "You are going to get a whipping. Don't cry." Then she gave me a shove and pushed me into the back alley.

There was my mom and in her hand, as expected, was the thin branch from a Cancer Tree with all the leaves pulled off. Those are really neat, you can hold the tip and run your hand right down the branch and the leaves come off pronto. Instant corporal punishment tools of the trade. I didn't really even get within five feet of my mother before she started swinging at my rear and the backs of my legs. My stomach was still sore from the gash I'd made when I climbed over the wall on Brophy and a Cancer Tree branch, the mature part, cut me wide open. It probably needed stitches but I'd never show it to anyone because stitches weren't my cup of tea. I mean, whose cup of tea are they anyway? I remember the first time I was told I needed stitches...Davy Dominguez had been horsing around with me while we watched everyone else play football in the Duchene's yard and he knocked me off the wooden railing and split my leg wide open. I hopped around a bit that time and didn't cry a tear. Just cussed and cussed and Bobbie Duchenes' stupid mom came out and put a band-aid on it. Bobbie was really spoiled and his mom used to keep him inside when it was hot because she thought he'd get sick or something. I showed my brother the gash and he said, "Uh oh, you need stitches," and repeated it, turning it into a Nana Nana BooBoo song. You're gonna get stitches, you're gonna get stitches. So nope. I'd take the beating I deserved for scaring my mom and never show anyone the gash in my gut. No way. She beat me all the way up both sets of stairs to our house and then some more in the living room and then she just sat down and cried for a while. She was always scared of that prisoner that got out of the town jail once. Although I never knew what he looked like, I can see him now...hiding out in the hills above our house. A murderer and my mom took some sort of pleasure in recounting the tale of the escaped convict that hid out in the hills there for a week or two before they finally caught him. She just cried and then she hugged me and it was all over. Francie always had good advice.

But this isn't about that sort of thing. This is about first times. I don't know but I think the first time you get arrested and booked, you don't really remember every detail. You don't really remember what the ink pad looks like or how big your thumb print is on the card. You don't get a copy of the mugshot and that is truly unfair. I'd really like one of those. It be a cool thing to keep in a family album like the one of my dad in the coffin. Some people think it is weird to want things like that but I think THEY are weird for not wanting them. Those are histories. And from the looks of me now, no one could believe that I faced three felony counts.

What I do remember is that orange jumpsuit and Francie, plus I remember the psycho I stayed overnight with in the cell. I remember the pancakes too, they weren't all that bad. I can see how a person could get used to free jail food and a bed to sleep in. The only problem is the roommates they put you with. Well, yes and no. I had two but the orange jumpsuit deserves more discussion. They took away my broken high heels, my black slit skirt and my gorgeous pink sweater with missing buttons and my panty hose. I really didn't want to give those up because panty hose make you feel thin but in jail, they help you to get out of this world should you want to. The cops are afraid you'll kill yourself once you get inside. They don't seem to worry too much if someone else might try to kill you though and they put people like me with crazy women who take drugs and cut out other people's tongues for kicks. But that's jumping ahead just a tad.

I put on my orange jumpsuit with Cochise County Jail in block letters on the back, turned over my possessions and stood at the iron gates looking at the mofo who had arrested me and was standing on the other side with his shit eating grin in full bloom. He was really enjoying it all. I was practically catatonic to be honest. I mean, I was in jail. Although I'd done alot of stupid things like burglarizing houses when I was six or seven, I never really thought I'd end up in jail.

He looked at me through the bars, up and down and said, "You know, when this is all over, I'd like to take you out for a cup of coffee." Yea, right. No one heard him except me but I know when and if I get to heaven I want to see him in hell. He was evil. When you are religious and a believer you think about stuff like that. I'd also like to see all the Lemony Snickets there on the other side of the final iron gates, looking at me and begging for a cup of water. I'd really like to see that. I don't want to see the judge there though, even though when they called him he refused to give me the option of posting bail because it was after closing time, small town you know. My one phone call to my brother was really a waste of time except that at least my family knew I needed some help. That was old Judge Helms, the hanging judge or sometimes, the marrying judge. No, I don't want to see him there behind the gates of hell. Afterall, he didn't arrest me for littering and certainly, he didn't look at me a year later while he was dancing with his wife at the Gadsden and flash a shit eating lavicsious grin. That was the state trooper, not him. No, he married me to the love of my life and got me to the Cedars for the first time. He gets off.So do the dentists who pulled out my teeth and the boys who made fun of me when they found out a fat girl had a crush on them. They all get off. They all were important in the scheme of things in one way or another and without them and their joys, rejections and pains, I'd be somewhere else. Maybe even working in a Dairy Queen or perhaps as a court stenographer or maybe even a barfly like an old friend I just met this summer at Elmo's bar and grill for the first time in twenty years. Barb looked awful. Divorced and still in love with the cad. Still making drunken treks between all the bars in Cochise County at midnight to see if he was there and dancing with someone else. I bought her a drink that night, several in fact and we laughed a bit and went our separate ways, hers being the Brewery or the Lowell Waiting Room. Mine, somewhere else.

The jail cell was beige and aren't they all some kind of drab color. I'll bet if they painted them orange there would be less recidivism. I'm sure of it. There is something about the color of those rooms that isn't impressive enough to keep you out nor enough to keep you in. The big door closed behind me and I saw Francie Vasquez sitting on one of the four bunks with a look I cannot describe. She was as shocked as I was.

"Meg! What are YOU doing in here?" Strangely enough, I had the same question. There was another in the room but she just turned her back when I walked in and placed something under her flat pillow. I told Francie my story and she just shook her head. She was innocent too. Something about embezzlement from the public school funds. I don't know and it isn't really important. She never really got out of the jail system and I heard that she is still in and out of them but that might just be gossip.

I was really lucky because they hadn't served dinner yet and after a half hour or so, chatting with Francie over the mutual problem we were having, a hand shoved three trays through a slot in the door. I can't remember what we ate but they did give us each a big navel orange. Francie told me not to eat it, that we'd be needing it overnight. I didn't really understand that but I did what she said. Francie always had good advice. I was trying pretty hard not to cry once I found out how slowly time passes in jail. It just crawls by. They don't give you a clock but you can tell by the way your body feels that time has slowed way, way down. No TV either. Just a bed and a couple of roommates and oranges that you save for some reason.

After we finished our meals we shoved the trays back through the slot. The other girl was watching me the whole time. She didn't talk but just stared and stared. Her eyes lacked a specific color. Finally though, she pointed her finger at me and said, "Come here." Francie didn't say anything so I did what I was told. The girl said, "I want to show you something." She pulled the book she had placed under her pillow and thumbed through it to the page where she'd folded down the corner and had circled a word in red ink. "This is what I am."

Psychotic.

Francie called me back over and told me that we'd have to stay awake all night. Our 'room mate' Francie told me, was traveling with her boyfriend in a van, dropping acid and smoking pot when they picked up a hitchhiker. Then they cut his tongue out. Just like that, lopped the poor suckers tongue right out of him. I heard later that they re-attached it though.

"We are going to play Oranges to stay awake Meg. We have to stay awake until she falls asleep. I mean it." So we started tossing oranges, to our roommate as well. We did that for what seemed hours until the other girl quit and went and laid down, then fell asleep. Francie and I took the bunks opposite and she made me sleep on the top for my own protection. You just don't find friends like Francie everyday and you have to remember them sometimes. You hope you'll see them once again, in heaven. That is where they belong because it isn't their fault. None of it is their fault really and even the psychotic girl probably had her reasons for doing what she did. God only knows.

And we slept, or sort of. I just lay awake in my bunk and listened to the silence outside. There isn't anything like the silence of a small town at night, dogs barking and no cars. The sound of doves in the morning is all you have in jail to know that dawn is on its way. I miss that place but not very much, jail that is. One night is more than enough for anyone.

......more to be revealed about Judge Helms, his secretary and that big trip up to the Cedars which, when concluded, my daughter remarked, "For any other family this day would have been abnormal."