Colfax Ave.

We turned West onto Colfax Ave., a notorious avenue, and the first thing we saw after crossing the interstate was an ambulance. Approaching I could see two medics, arms akimbo, talking expressively with each other while a teenage boy lay crumpled on the sidewalk, his head somewhat supported by a concrete slab. “Drunk,” my husband noted, “so they’re waiting on the drunk mobile” which would take the kid somewhere to sober up.

This is Colfax Ave. at 3:30 on a Saturday afternoon. This is when things are relatively calm.

I felt my muscles tense, and I scrutinized every block. I always knew to avoid this road on my few, very few, ventures into the city. Anyone with eyes could see the broken down church sunk heavily into the ground, symbolizing the weight and ache of this no-mans’-land. The church, unmarked, overrun by shrubs, with broken window panes, looked closed. The housing and businesses didn’t look any better, but they were open. Next door to Miss Rose’s, where you could have your best friend’s name tattoed forever on your forearm while you had him cremated, you could rent a belly dancing outfit or have your lingerie altered. Why there were two new condominiums being erected in the ruble, I’ll never know.

Rewind to a few weeks ago as I sorted through which papers to keep, which ones to drag across the country with me, I uncovered old training papers. Most became kindling for our fireplace, but not before I glanced at them. One paper I tossed still gives me the chills because it briefed me on the gang activity in the state. If you’re a parent, you don’t want to know. But you should. It reminded me, among other things, that this road which we now drove down was a deadly dividing line between two gangs. Now I’m nervous about getting caught in the crossfire.

At 3 PM, I want to laugh at my own paranoia, but at 6PM, on our return trip to the interstate, I stop laughing. More people were about, acting strange, showing colors, talking on the corners. A half-naked man took a shower with a water bottle as we passed by. The night life is just beginning.

Again, anyone with eyes can see this is no place to be, but my new knowledge increases my alarm. I try not to look. I try not to worry. I hope we never come this way again. I wish I didn’t know anyone who calls this neighborhood home.

I’m never quite sure how this chapter of my life is going to effect me, or when my work life will creep into my free life on the street. Sometimes my experience makes me more confident, and then there are times like this night where it makes me more concerned.

Where We’re Going

We never intended to get into the correctional career, but as it so happened, my husband took a job as a correctional officer in a neighboring state so that we can establish ourselves as residents there. I am mildly curious how they do things differently down there. So far their hiring practices are about the same: if you can breathe, talk, and run a little; if you’re willing to shoot to kill a running figure; if you’re not a felon yourself; you’re in.

At the end of the day, corrections comes down to quantity rather than quality. Few make it a career, so you have to constantly replace the ones who have left or promoted. Eventually, you have to take anyone who applies. I don’t mean to discount the excellent individuals who do good work and maintain their decency, but they are few. I’d be interested, after my experience, to hear strong, effective alternatives to warehousing criminals, but it is not my soapbox or passion.

We were talking about this at lunch the other day, me, the math teacher, and the automotive instructor. Keep in mind that our state continues to shut down prisons because we simply don’t have the prisoners to fill them. It’s a good problem to have. “The most obvious place to build a prison,” blurted out the math teacher, “is between the two major cities.” I was horrified, just imagining what a prison would to the pristine communities that currently dot the region. “If you think about it,” he continued, “they always build prisons where no one lives. You don’t have a workforce out there, so people end up commuting. It doesn’t help those towns even though everyone says it’s supposed to help their economy.” Prisons ruin towns one way or another, and no access to a workforce is  going to change that. I saw it in my hometown, I see it in the town where I work. Let’s hope that when the numbers spike again, as cycles tell us they will some day, no one thinks like he does.

We hope that my husband will not be with the state prisons for long. The very week that he accepted the position we learned that one of the inmates sliced up the face of one of the guards. This is to say that my blog is not yet finished. After I have unpacked most of our boxes, taken my kids berry picking and fishing, and put a few fully, home cooked meals on the table I will be able to make sense of the journals I wrote my first year on the job. At the same time, I will be busy with homeschooling, tutoring, and furthering my self-education on matters of education that came to light from talking to my students over the past two years.

I Am Not an Ambulance Driver

When my husband worked for an ambulance service as an EMT, I learned that medics resent being called ambulance drivers. One of the older partners in the company is also an artist who has published a series of comic books titled I Am Not An Ambulance Driver. I’m starting to understand.

At my daughter’s private pre-school I attract a lot of attention. Last year one of the local cops also had a child who attended the school, and that helped. This year, it’s just me. I walk in beside doctors, golf pros, and lawyers in their fancy clothes and perfect make-up when I go to pick up my daughter. She doesn’t mind, she knows that I am a teacher, and she’s very proud of that.

Other kids and parents do not understand that, however, and I have to field questions once in awhile. Out on the playground one afternoon, the cutest little boy asked me if I were a policeman. Since I am not, he wanted to know what I did. He was very young, so I tried to explain, “Policeman catch the bad guys. I help watch the bad guys and keep them away from you after the cops have caught them.” He seemed satisfied, and I was about to walk away when he called out, “You won’t see me then. I’m a good kid.”

Yesterday, I got off a little early, so my daughter’s committed Romeo saw me. She won’t give him the time of day even though his mom tells me he’s been in love since he first laid eyes on her. He did all the right things, like show her his car collection (she has a thing for cool cars) and get a fake tattoo, but it makes no difference. She’s a constant topic at their dinner table whereas I never hear his name on her lips. Two years later it’s the same story, so he tried a different approach when I showed up unexpectedly. “Hey,” he called out to me, “I like officers.” He told me this a few times while my daughter clung to my arm and told him, “She’s not an officer. She is not an officer. She’s a teacher. Can we go home?” I agreed, but he went on, “Do you know why I like officers?” He tried to explain in a way only toddlers can. We started to move away, when he called me again, “Do you know what my first word was? Ambulance.” My husband laughed, “He’s going to be trouble.” I think he’s relieved that we’re leaving “trouble” behind.

I am a teacher, and I’m glad people won’t be confused about that point after the next couple of weeks.

Thai Peanut Sauce

The results are in: Thai Peanut Sauce was a hit. My student’s bunkie now begs him to make it every other day. 

Chili Peppers

One of the unfortunate side-effects of my job is my new intolerance for preparing hot peppers.

A couple years ago I joined in the pepper frenzy of our state and bought a bushel of green chili peppers. For three hours that night I cleaned, seeded, and froze my peppers out of which I made rellenos and green chili sauce the rest of the year.

Then I went through Basic Training at the DOC Academy where I became certified to carry OC. That meant I had to enter an OC filled room and disperse my spray at the target. You’ll understand why I volunteered to be one of the first. Those who went last had to endure a higher concentration of the stuff. I passed. Then I became really sick. Besides a few embarrassing minutes, I didn’t think much of it.

It was chili season again. Again I faithfully drove out to one of the farms and picked up my bushel of fire roasted chilis. Not even a quarter of the way through, I had to put my bag in the refrigerator. Snot was pouring down my nose and I was tearing up like a baby. It took me four days to freeze my bushel. With my peppers safely in the freezer, I found myself reluctant to touch them for anything.

At Thanksgiving, my mother-in-law assigned my brother-in-law to smoke a turkey. He’s never made any meat I didn’t devour, so I looked forward to the spicy, nontraditional recipe he brought with him. Then he made the brine which calls for a 1/4 C of dried pepper flakes in warm water. It didn’t take long before I was coughing like crazy, but it wasn’t until the entire house was doused with the effects of pepper in the air that he took the brine out in the garage.

I love chili peppers, and I am very sad as I look at my bags and bags of frozen peppers  that I am reluctant to touch them now all due to a certification that took me less than a minute to complete.

Cake and Insurance

If I had been writing a story, I would have drawn your attention to the white car parked in the only entrance to the car sales lot, the very car sales lot that my daughter, when we were new to the area, would exclaim, “Look Mom, yellow!” Not just yellow, but a loud yellow with many bright pendants. I would’ve pointed out the car by way of foreshadowing. In real life we call this premonition. My premonition foreshadowed the next three hours of my life.

I can’t say what precisely was strange about the car or how it was parked inconveniently in a driveway on a busy intersection–you get used to poor choices in this town–but I noticed it as I approached and joined the line of cars waiting to turn right onto Northern Ave. Even so, I was momentarily confused when a heavy thunk caused my car to move a couple inches in the rear. Looking over my shoulder I saw at once that the white car had backed into mine, into the door where my daughter sat jabbering about her pink, fancy, imaginary world. In the time it took for me to park on the side of the street as best I could, I calmed down the mother bear in me, recalling as I did that no one was hurt, and that I was still in my uniform.

Here was a predicament! If you can, picture a town of 100,000 with a high rate of crime that touches every neighborhood; where six state prisons, a city police force, a couple of sheriffs’ departments, and state patrol hire a large portion of the population. It’s hard to find a family, except maybe for the doctors’, who don’t find themselves on one side of the law or the other. I don’t enjoy wearing my uniform to run errands, but living forty miles out on a ranch necessitates that I get my fuel, coffee, and occasionally my groceries in blue. Some days more than others I feel keenly the eyes upon me; to many that I pass I am an enemy, or at least not a friend.

So there I was, in uniform, approaching strangers who were likely to see me as a foe, and I had to confront them. I realized that I was scared, but I was angry too, and the two neutralized each other. I wasn’t sure what to do about addressing a personal situation, however, as a state employee.

Pen and paper in hand I started to ask for the driver’s information, but something about her attitude made me pause mid-sentence. “Are you insured?” I asked.

“No,” she huffed, like it was obvious, like I had just asked if it were raining on our beautiful sunny day.

My luck had run out. The last two people who hit me were very kind and quite insured. I was about to get an education. Uninsured, with some guy named Chris and an attitude to fill the block, she madly punched at her cell phone buttons and tossed her huge, blond crusted curls around. She left Chris and the car salesman to do the talking. The Irish in me flared, and I admit I didn’t think things through very clearly.

Chris made some prison comment that showed his familiarity with the system which I ignored, but made note of. Meanwhile the car salesman tried to distract me with idle chatter and finding common ground (I made a mental note to use the scenario as a lesson opener for everyday rhetoric).

“Where do you work?” he wanted to know. I told him while trying to listen in on the phone conversation. “So you know so-and-so,” he replied. I did unfortunately, so he went on about the guy. You might think 100,000 makes a large town or a small city–I did at one point–but this place functions like a town less than half its size. It’s all boils down to who you attended high school with, no joke. I asked a question to hide my annoyance at being drug into distracting conversation. “She’s a really nice person,” was the last thing he said, as if niceness would take the dent out of my car, and I nearly laughed at his logical fallacy. He had certainly found his calling at the obnoxiously yellow used car sales lot.

Then I allowed myself to drive to a shop down the road that the chica knew about which gave me time to use the remaining fuel in my car, quickly call my husband (who soundly set me straight), and call the police. Chica, or Antionette, thought she would tear me down with glares when she heard the police were coming. (Later, my funny, more educated co-workers cracked jokes about Antionette: “When you got out of the car, did you tell her that heads were going to roll? And who needs insurance, when you have cake?”

Thirty minutes later, hanging out in our cars, my daughter clutching her pants, and us with no where to go, Antionette and her curls bounced over to my window. “How much longer is this going to take? I have things to do,” she demanded. “Yeah, that’s life,” I smirked, but because I too was anxious and holding up dinner, I called. All the cars were busy on a Friday evening.

The cop showed up moments after my husband. Antionette looked sharply at me as I added a baby carrier to my back seat passenger load. She seemed confused that my tone with my children sharply contrasted the tone I had been using with her. Confusion turned into disgust as she stomped away from the cop and she shot me another glare. Not only was she uninsured, she was driving without a license. The cop seemed sorry she couldn’t do more than issue a citation and then muttered, “O great,” as the chica’s friends rolled up in a car only gang-bangers can create, “What losers.” The cop knew them. Two images in the rear window indicated some affiliation, but I couldn’t remember anything about them. It was clear, however, these two didn’t run anyone’s show.

With Antionette fuming, Chris and friend tried to take care of the damages through the friend’s nameless body shop. My new education about the world warned me what really happened at the shop, and what it was for. Antionette repeated, “I don’t know about any of this,” if anyone tried to speak with her, finally declaring she would take care of it in court. My husband closed some of the distance between them to quietly explain that her court date had nothing to do with the damages. I grew concerned as his open carry glinted in the evening sun. Chris’s eyes flicked down to acknowledge it. My mind raced four miles Northwestward to my facility where I knew people who had committed acts of violence over less intimidation.

I hate discussing things without the facts. As my mind snapped back to the present setting I could see we were about to go in circles and my kids would soon go frantic for food, not to mention the bathroom, if we didn’t leave soon. “Look Antionette, I’m going to get a quote for the repairs and we’ll have a conversation then. That’s all, just a conversation,” I said. I turned to Chris, “Is that fair?” He agreed, so she let it be.

We let the cop see that Antionette got into someone’s passenger seat. I told my husband to meet me at the nearest gas station before my eyes melted in front of these people, before they realized my attitude was a mask for my fears, before they realized I was angry at myself for even caring about my car–my family was safe. We drove off into the sunset.

Three years ago in the same situation I’m not sure what I would have done, but I would have been intimidated, frightened of people I only knew from Hollywood and the 5 o’clock news. In the back of my head I would hear my dad warning me that things were not what they seemed, so don’t be stupid, but he wouldn’t spell it out any further. Although I couldn’t paint the entire picture, I understood far more of the situation that evening than I would’ve three years ago. It was useful information to have, I’ll allow that, but it revealed how differently I see the world now, I who used to protect my bubble from knowledge of worldly things. It reminded me how much I look forward to being a civilian again, not a public servant.

 

Miracle Worker

I came home a little bit proud last night.  At home I dubbed myself, jokingly, The Miracle Worker because, when all else fails, they call me. 

“C.,” they say, “Mr. Oro here has been trying to pass the GED the past three years he’s been here, and he’s scheduled to leave for the community in ten days. Well, we’re offering him a special test on Friday, the last time he can take it this year, because he missed the test last week by ten points. Ya, see?” I see. I look at the calendar. I see that I have four days to work a miracle. 

Under normal circumstances I might get frustrated or tired from the extra assignment, but this week is my last week with my students. I didn’t appreciate losing my last couple hours to listen and mentor, some I had known a full twenty months. On top of that, four rooms have been packed and stored in boxes on account of our remodel and shuffling of classrooms, so when I asked  for a diagnostic test that I’d used before to help tutor GED reading students the teacher just threw up her hands in despair. Heavens, she didn’t know where they were stored. I said nothing, but I wanted to remind her that I had four days and no one could tell me what exactly the boy needed to work on. The next day I asked again, so she had a couple offenders move her boxes around until we could find the diagnostic test. Three days remained. 

The tests confirmed what our conversation and work the day before had revealed: he could not answer any analysis or synthesis question correctly. Not one. I tried to hide my horror: I was supposed to raise and change his cognitive process in 72 hours. At any rate, I had to convince his short term memory to think in a different way. I rolled up my sleeves. 

I had heard Oro’s name often, but I couldn’t tell you anything more about him. All I could surmise was that he had a bad attitude and a big mouth that landed him in a heap of trouble all the time. That could describe a lot of people I work with, but most didn’t end up in our Incidental Reports every other week. This didn’t bother me. He had motivation now to pass the test and we didn’t have any history. In situations like these I rely on the 1:4, or 1:7, rule–it depends who you ask. At my last school, we tried to practice four positive comments for every one criticism we gave our students. I was told, about four months into my time in the prison, that with the youth we serve, it’s more like seven positives to every negative. I used my imagination to come up with ways and reasons to compliment Oro the first day because I needed him to work with me. One the second day I knew exactly why his name came up often and everyone just laughed when they found out I got stuck tutoring him, but I  persisted and he kept working without complaint. A word and I could redirect him. 

“Miss,” he said from the back of my room, his eyes droopy, hours before his test,”I’ve never studied this hard  in my life. I wish I had done so earlier.” He took a break and told me how he couldn’t sleep or eat with ten days remaining at the facility and everything hinging on his GED test. “It’s stress,” I explained to him, but he wouldn’t believe me. No one wants to admit that they’re afraid of going back, uncertain of what changes they are really going to make or what they intend to get away with, and how to manage it all. He had the added uncertainty of passing his GED, because if he didn’t, the administrators were saying, he couldn’t go home; instead they would send him to the half-way house. No pressure, on him or me.

The morning of his test he got drug out of bed for a quick review with me. I promised to hold positive thoughts for him all afternoon, and I was glad to be too busy all that morning to worry much. At 2:30 PM we got the good news; he didn’t just pass, but he gained twenty points on his test. “Thank you, Miss,” he shook my hand, “that is a huge relief. I can’t stop smiling.” What a relief, in a sense. I think we all expect him to mess up his life, although he also seems to understand what he has to do to change. I’m left to wonder, as I’ve been doing lately, if I really helped him. Is he going to use this tool, his GED, to do anything with his life, or is he going back to prison some day? All I know is that I did my job, and I did it well. That’s all I can do, helpful or not helpful.