Jail Song

Before her mom started using drugs, she'd smelled like oranges. At least that's how Bernadine remembers her, but then she was only a toddler back then. Oranges, sunshine, laundry on the line—she has memories but she's not sure if it's just from one particular day or if that was really what their life was like together. She's got darker memories too, but those she refuses to think about, even though it drives her school counselor nuts. Mrs. Harris wants her to go back, to talk about when her mom was using, but Bernadine's shut an armored door on that time and refuses to open it even a crack. Mrs. Harris sighs at her for being so stubborn, and Bernadine figures that her stubbornness is mixed up with her foolishness, like two colors of hand-paint swirled together to make a big brown smudge deep inside of her.

Bernadine keeps a calendar with a red circle on the twice monthly visits when Grandpa Gus brings her to see her mom. The next visit is around Thanksgiving, not on it, a week and a half before it. "We'll get Fritos out of the vending machine," Grandpa Gus promises, shows Bernadine that he's got a collection of quarters already stacked up on his dresser for their visit. She's got a stack of quarters from her allowance but wants to keep them for the scooter that's displayed in the Hobby Shop's front window.

They had wanted to put him in a cast, give his badly broken finger time to heal, but Gus didn't have that kind of time. The hospital doctor had said it'd take eight to ten weeks, maybe longer, and then Gus would be good as new. The hospital doctor didn't seem to understand that Gus didn't have eight to ten weeks to walk around la-dee-dah with a plaster cast. He told the doc he wanted the tip of his offending middle finger gone. Nice and easy, just cut off the damn piece and he could get back to working as the town handyman with just some good gauze bandages and white medical tape.

That's the story Bernadine was told about her Grandpa Gus who gave other truck drivers a half-bird salute when they cut him off on the highway. He gave the half-bird to Grandma Jo when the steak she set in front of him was over-well rather than under-well. He even gave the half-bird to Bernadine's fourth grade teacher who claimed she'd shoved another girl on the playground. The truth? His amputated half-bird just didn't have the same power as a full-bird and so no one got particularly mad at gesticulating Gus. After all, how could you get mad at a guy who looked like Santa Claus in a plaid shirt and coveralls?

Bernadine knew that the one to watch side-eye was actually her grandma who was as skinny as Grandpa Gus was fat, had a sharp pointy nose, eyeglasses with metal frames that were almost the same gray-blue steel as her eyes. Grandma Jo didn't take fools lightly and Bernadine came to understand that she held a lot of foolishness inside her nine-year-old body. Grandma Jo said that she got it from her mother who was in the county jail after the second time (the second time!) an undercover cop caught her trying to sell a Ziploc baggie filled with the white powder that her mom used to claim was just baking soda. "It's good for brushing my teeth. Keeps them sparkling clean." Although her mom's teeth were awful, gray, and broken.

On the morning of their jail journey, Grandma Jo makes them pancakes, sets them down without a word. Whole days can pass without Grandma Jo opening her mouth, so Bernadine's surprised when she says, "You should come up with at least one good story to tell your mother today."

"That's about right," Grandpa Gus agrees. "Last time you just sat there, all kinda sullen. Your mama counts down the minutes until she gets to see you."

Bernadine's stomach clenches and she mops some pancake in the syrup but doesn't bring the bite to her lips. When she was younger, it was easier. She didn't know any better. But now she knows that the visitor's waiting area will smell like way too much lemony Lysol, how hard the chair she'll sit on will feel while she waits for her mother to come out, how her mother will smother her in a dank-smelling hug. Mrs. Harris says that it's okay to feel angry, but that maybe a little part of her should also make room in her heart for love. What Mrs. Harris doesn't seem to understand is that she doesn't love the woman with blonde thin hair and bad teeth. She doesn't want to tell that woman a good story about school or her friends. Instead, she decides that this morning she'll tell her mother the truth, that her teacher called in Grandpa Gus for a conference because she'd shoved Marcie Bernback on the playground, knocked her down backwards. Maybe she'd add that Grandpa Gus had argued there must've been a good reason because his granddaughter wasn't one to go around pushing people over willy-nilly. And maybe she'd say that there actually hadn't been a good reason at all, that Marcie Bernback had just bugged her that morning for being such a know-it-all in class, using a long word that none of the rest of them knew, inspiring their teacher to tell them that their vocabulary homework that night was to learn how to use "interspersed" in a sentence. Stupid Marcie Bernback with her stupid big words that she must get from her mom who drove a cute shiny red VW Bug.

"Finish up your hotcakes, Pumpkin," Grandpa Gus says as he pushes back his chair, wads up his paper napkin on his empty sticky plate. "We've gotta get going."

"Drive like you've got some sense," Grandma Jo says and picks up his plate to take into the kitchen to wash. She makes it sound like they're going on a long trip, but really the jail's just on the other side of town, out by the dump, but Bernadine knows her grandpa will speed there, tailgating and then jamming on his truck's brakes so that she'll feel grateful to push open her door, step out onto the parking lot.

And indeed, she thinks, "Thank God," when they make it safely to the jail. As usual, Grandpa Gus gives a half-bird salute to the guard tower with its tinted glass. And as usual, there's trash stuck in the barbed wire atop the tall brick wall. Bernadine looks around the parking lot, curious to see which other kids have come for visiting hour. A family piles out of a van and there's a boy who looks like he might be maybe a year or so older than her who's clearly the one in charge, striding ahead of his younger siblings towards the jail's doors. Sometimes on these trips she recognizes a kid in the waiting area, a regular like herself, but that's all they've got in common; she'd rather chew off her foot than talk to a jail kid.

~

It turns out that when she's sitting face to face with her mother, she doesn't really want to tell her about Marcie Bernback after all. "So, how's school?" her mother wants to know as she rips open the bag of Fritos Grandpa Gus has bought from the vending machine. 

"Fine."

"Tell me more." Her mom pops a Frito into her gray-toothed mouth and tears open a sleeve of Ritz crackers. 

"Everything's fine. It's school."

"Tell her about your friends, about what you're learning," Grandpa Gus prompts her.

"We learned the word 'interspersed'." She grabs a few Fritos and some Ritz, holds them on her palm. "Like the chips are interspersed with the crackers."

"Like I'm interspersed with a lot of crazy ladies," her mom says and tips Bernadine's hand so the crackers and chips go into her own palm.

"I'm not sure you use it like that," Bernadine says, thinking it sounds wrong somehow. "Marcie Bernback's mom would know. Her mom taught her that word. Marcie's always showing off her vocabulary."

"So how about I teach you a word?" her mother says.

"Like what?"

"Like I don't know." Her mother stares at the crackers and chips in her hand, then closes her fist so they crumble together. She takes a thick pinch, tilts back her head, and drops the mixture into her mouth. "Like how about 'high-voltage' as in that light bulb." She points to the ceiling. 

"I know 'high-voltage.'"

"Okay, how about gangrene, as in my cellie's in the sick bay with gangrene."

"What's that?" Doesn't really want to know.

"It's where you get sick because you try to slit—"

"It's a kind of sickness," Grandpa Gus interrupts. "Think of another word, for God's sake."

"All right, how about 'ignoramus'?"

"I know that one."

"So maybe 'defunct'? As in the plumbing here is all 'defunct'?"

Bernadine also knows this word, but says, "Okay, that'll be my vocab homework for tonight."

"It means shitty, not working, only a spurt coming out of the damn defunct showerhead."

"Got it."

"So how are you doing these last two weeks?" Grandpa Gus asks her mother.

"Same as the last two weeks and the two weeks before that." She looks Bernadine straight in the eye. "Never get in trouble, child. It's not worth it. Nothing's worth this."

Bernadine wonders if Grandpa Gus will bring up the teacher conference, but he's whistling softly under his breath, the way he does whenever they visit here.

She thinks of Marcie Bernback's mom in her shiny red VW Bug, her brown hair all tidy, her teeth straight and white, her mind filled with plenty of good vocabulary words ready to share. Bernadine watches her mother pour a handful of crushed up Fritos and Ritz into her mouth, wonders if there really ever was a time when they were in a yard together with the smell of oranges, sunshine, and fresh laundry hanging on the line.

This piece was featured in Volume 3, Issue 1. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.