A Jail Journal by Slug’Uh

Preface

I’m too honest & optimistic. The Public Defender strongly advised me not to publish this before my case is resolved. However, if I’m going to get off the hook, it’s not going to be for censoring myself.

           There would be no story here without law enforcement. On the second floor of the Sacramento County Courthouse, sunlight enters through an eastern wall of windows. Four police officers are in the waiting room sitting on orderly plush black chair sets like everyone else. Two sit alone looking through paperwork. the other two sit together talking. One is talking more than the other, about scaring a suspect into running toward traffic. He says she turned to run right into traffic. After saying that, he laughed. The other officer didn’t laugh but said something & they both quieted down. “If they weren’t in a courthouse…” I think to myself. 

What worries me is that if we do not allow people to reveal their true character openly, they hide it. Do we change society by not knowing, or having conversations? 

When you think of true crime in Downtown Sacramento you think of Dorothea Puente, but this booklet is about what happens every day. It’s as predictable as the weather. It’s the kind of true crime that involves all of us.

hit by a light rail

October 4, 2023

Maybe I did want to get hit by a light rail. The desire was somewhere so deep in my subconscious that for a second, I was terrified that it might happen. The train operators could have been homicidal maniacs, but all they did was laugh at me.

I wanted to take a bike to my kid so even though it was 11:00 p.m. I set out. I had been drinking & I was nervous about going away for a while without getting the bike to my kid before I left. Every day last week I planned to get it done, then ran out of time. I was heading to the Amtrak station when I ran into my romantic partner at the store where he works. He wanted me to go home but I was determined to get the bike to Davis. He asked me to wait for him to get off work & at one point, he took my phone.

Some of his co-workers were making fun of me in another language all night, but I stayed. Outside I talked to the people who assembled around the store throughout the night. It’s one of the only places open almost 24 hours a day in downtown Sacramento, besides the hospitals, & jail.

At around 7:45 a.m. my partner still wouldn’t give my phone back. I told him that I needed to check the train schedule & that I would still wait for him, but he said no & walked away. I was feeling rejected & anxious about the things I had to get done when I looked around & noticed the light rail arrive at its stop across the street. The pedestrian light to cross the street was green. I started walking across the street & stopped inside the crosswalk in front of the train. The train operators honked & laughed at me. I looked toward the store to see if my partner would come out. He didn’t.

Oh, look at that, the pastel sunrise looks like a movie scene. I must be seven stories up. Through my northeast-facing rectangular window, I can see a double-decker freight train traveling west along the train tracks. It looks like a train set.

The sky’s clear enough to see the Sierra Nevada Mountain range to the East. Birds gather in flight to move like organized chaos before choosing a direction & then fly as a flock out of sight.

        I know the next building over to my left is the federal courthouse. North of the courthouse, there’s a new building going up. Its windows look artistic, like rainfall. Construction workers walk back & forth like tiny action figures.

Why do people write on walls? When I was younger, I wanted to tag a boxcar because I liked seeing that kind of artwork while waiting for trains to pass. On my 18^th birthday, a friend wanted to take me out to tag a boxcar, but we couldn’t find any. We ended up going on a graffiti rampage & got caught. She was FATCAT & I was SLUG.

Years later, while living in Flagstaff, Arizona, I met a man at Wendy’s with no legs. He was having lunch with his mom & I asked him if he was a veteran. He wasn’t. It turned out that he lost his legs to a train while he was trying to teach his nephew how to jump freights; don’t.

        They were visiting Flagstaff from Phoenix. A few months later I made it down to Phoenix for a visit & he showed me how to tag freights which were plentiful there & already covered with artwork. He told me to change my tag to SLUG’UH, so I have.

        After that, we drove up a mountain to see the stars. You’re supposed to be able to see UFOs from up there. The smog is so bad in Phoenix that you must drive up a mountain to see past Earth’s atmosphere.

I’m in seven West: 200: 20. I got here last night around 10:30 p.m. with one other woman. Three other women we met in holding were brought up later in the night.

        It is probably an announcement over the P.A. system that wakes me. Breakfast arrives minutes later & I miss it because I open the door, then go back for my shoes, & the door shuts & locks before I can catch it. The food doesn’t motivate me to wake up early, maybe I’ll lose weight while I’m here.

        This cell has two bunks, but I’m the only one here. To get to the upper bunk one has to climb onto the desk. Last night I accidentally called medical looking for the light switch. Daylight is a massive mood enhancer in here. This is the first jail I’ve ever been to with windows to the outside.

        The writing on the walls is in pencil, some is in color. The center of the widest wall has a drawing of a structure with a cross on top. It’s boxy & 2-dimensional. On the right side, there’s a roof that almost looks 3-D. I’m working on cleaning it up a bit by washing off the bad parts.

        Scrawled above the structure is “Jesus Hœsuse.” Just like that with an ‘o’ or ‘e’ that looks like a martini olive. There are clouds drawn on the wall above the structure. A pot of gold sits at one end of a blue, yellow, & black rainbow that originates from a cloud directly over the cross. The pot of gold is labeled “Lucky Charms.” There are diamonds & faint bubbles along the wall above the window.

        55 minutes until dinner.

Dinner wasn’t anything special. It’s almost 5:00 p.m. now. My Grandma told me that she wanted me to learn about Catholicism when she started to think about her funeral because she was Miwok & Catholic. We didn’t have a funeral for her.

I arranged my Great Auntie’s funeral. It was in a little Catholic Church in Colusa. That morning it was overcast. There was a mist in the air until we got to the cemetery when it started to rain. After lunch, while we were on our way home the sky cleared & was crossed by the most beautiful double rainbow I have ever seen. When we got home there were dozens of people outside in their yards & on the sidewalks just looking up.  

Detox is nice, they call me over the intercom to report to the nurse. Then the nurse takes my blood pressure & gives me electrolytes. When the nurse asks what my detox symptoms are, I say fear. Then she repeats the question. I guess I’m not detoxing as bad as they want.

        I drink a certain amount every night & I used to smoke marijuana cigarettes too, but I haven’t been smoking recently. At home, I drink a 200 mL bottle of liquor, 32 Oz. of beer, or a bottle of wine in the evenings. I don’t buy more than I will drink, or I can get carried away. When I told them that here, they put me on this detox regimen.

        My alcohol consumption slowly became a daily matter after my mom died & recently I’ve been trying to reduce it. I started seeing one alcohol & drug counselor at the Woodland Indian Health clinic until she ghosted me, and then I started seeing another one. Before I got ghosted by the second one, she had me see a physician who prescribed me Gabapentin. It’s supposed to help induce sleep & reduce alcohol use, but I don’t take it because I read online that it can be habit-forming.

        More than a decade ago, when my alcohol use was much less than now, I attended White Bison meetings. That’s a Native American 12-step program. The Sacramento Native American Health Center hosted those meetings, but they didn’t help. SNAHC is on 21^st & J, which meant that I would walk past 20^th & K to get home after meetings. That intersection kind of turns into one big party by the time the White Bison meetings got out. Plus, I get tired of guilt-riddled confessions that people tell at those meetings. Native Americans can get competitive about guilt.

California Native Americans negotiated treaties that were so good for us that the United States Congress pitched a fit & refused to ratify any of them. I pitched a fit to get my phone back. Maybe I’ll get it back when I get out.

The guy I’ve been seeing works the graveyard shift and loves it, that’s how we met. I usually avoid romantic relationships, but he traversed my aversions. There’s a language barrier between us because English is maybe his third or fourth language. I think that’s one factor that led to our disagreement before my arrest. I also have a very American attitude of entitlement to having my phone. Still, we communicate well enough for me to know that he cares about people & has faith.

Finding nice people to talk with is hard. The ladies in here are nice to talk with. One woman used to work at the 515 Market on R Street which closed last year. She gives me the run-down on how I can spend my time & take care of myself in here. Another woman is only a couple of months younger than me & soon after meeting each other, we start walking & talking together like old friends.

October 5, 2023

Still not sure what’s waking me up in the morning. A few minutes after I wake, the door “pops;” unlocks. I get up to get breakfast. Then I hear a clatter & a scream. I am frantically dressing my feet to get to the door when a woman opens it holding out a food tray. Alarmed & wondering why we aren’t lining up for this, I take the tray & pier into the hallway. A stack of brown food trays is piled on the floor. The trays on top are askew & one lies on the floor next to the pile. Red fruit sauce is splattered across all the trays & onto the floor.

        My tray looks & smells completely unappetizing. A woman has struggled so much to bring this tray right to my door & I don’t want it even a little bit. When she returns to collect my untouched food tray, I feel bad. She tells me to take the orange & milk, so I do.

        The sky is dark as night with white city lights scattered on buildings & along streets below. Traffic lights blink red at intersections of desolate streets connecting downtown to Richards Boulevard. As I write, the sky fades into cobalt, purple, & green at the horizon. This morning looks clearer than yesterday. Cirrus clouds brush the sky just above the crest of purple Sierra mountains, suddenly standing beneath a bright pink sunrise.

        More time passes than I would like before we get “dayroom,” time in the main room outside of our cells. My priority is to call home. I get through & talk to my dad for two minutes. Then I sit & talk with some new people because the ones who I got to know yesterday were released this morning. Good for them, I hope they do well.

        Today I’m ready to take a shower. Following the advice of the woman I met yesterday, I’m prepared with my towel, soap, toothbrush & toothpaste. They’re all packed into a brown paper bag that got delivered to the door of my cell with soap, toilet paper, “kites,” & Bob Barker brand Maxi-Pads. I’ve also packed some paper & pencils that I found, already in my cell upon arrival.

        One woman plays chess with me for a while. Both of us are distracted. She’s distracted by the miseries of life & talks about it as though she’s explaining it to herself. I’m distracted by writing it all down. She keeps thinking we’re playing checkers, so I remind her that we’re playing chess & write that down too.

        Each time the officers walk around the room checking the cells, I ask to use a pencil sharpener. After two rounds, one of them brings back a cart with two old-school sharpeners. The one that I use works. An older woman walks up with a box full of colored pencils, excited to sharpen them. She asks if the sharpeners work today, saying that they’ve been broken. She tries to use one & says that it’s broken, it’s got something stuck in it, so she waits for me to finish sharpening four regular pencils that came with my cell.

        My dayroom time is interrupted by a visitor from the district attorney’s office. I was unaware if I had a charge or not. The visitor is wearing a black, knit tie, which impresses me because I’ve never seen one before. I have court at 3:00 p.m. & the charge against me is disorderly conduct by public intoxication. It carries a potential sentence of up to one year, which is longer than a jail sentence for driving under the influence.  

        It’s counterintuitive to punish alcohol users while issuing so many alcohol licenses downtown where I live. By now we’ve all learned about how substance use disorder is a health issue that’s linked to trauma. Ergo we’re punishing people for coping with trauma badly. The morning I got arrested wasn’t even that bad, some mornings I felt lucky to have survived the night before & the police couldn’t be bothered.

        I saw the most police hypocrisy between 2009 & 2011. I was placed on more 5150 holds than anyone I know without ever wanting to hurt myself or anyone else. They tested me for chemicals on all of those holds. When I was pregnant, I tested negative for all chemicals. When I wasn’t pregnant I tested positive for marijuana & nothing else.

I finally got copies of the medical records, earlier this year & the police reports, a few months later. When I finally read the police reports I found out that they completely omitted my statement most of the time. If they did include it, they either manipulated it or ignored it.

I’m not sure why people lie, I rarely need to. They had to lie to have any kind of basis for the holds. I tried so hard to understand it, but I had not considered police dishonesty.  One of my counselors suggested that I could be disassociating.

The judge complimented me on my “profession” as a writer & my college degree! The public defender must have noted those things. Then the judge released me on my own recognizance until a November 8^th court date. I wasn’t expecting any of that.

I was friendly to people all through the night & early morning; paying for things when people couldn’t afford what they wanted to buy. My partner initially took my phone away because I was playing music requests outside. I don’t know why he wouldn’t give it back except to keep me there & now 10 minutes of holding an Amtrak-bound light rail train could cost me a year away from my family.

        I don’t do anything here, it’s the opposite of justice. We should use service & restitution to atone for wrongdoing. This justice system makes crime impersonal. If perpetrators had to face the people whom they have wronged, it would have a greater impact. I should have to hand out free light rail tickets & passes at the food bank or something.

I’ve been listening to News Radio. Dianne Feinstein’s Memorial was today & a George Santos aid could get a five-year sentence for something.

An officer stops by to ask if I can clean graffiti off the walls by Saturday. They’ve been asking for a couple of days, but this officer just now leaves the cleaning supplies for me to get it done. He pushes the supplies inside the door of my cell with his black boot. He says that my detox appointment is a priority.

        Strange that I was trying for months to get ahold of an addiction counselor on the outside, yet the justice system has the manpower to both inflict more trauma & monitor my symptoms quicker than outside services could.

October 6, 2023

Waiting for the sun to rise again.

The detox nurse came to see me late last night after I’d already fallen asleep. She wanted to take me off the detox list, but I like leaving my cell to get electrolytes, so she kept me on the list & gave me some packets of powdered electrolytes. I found out that they would give me Valium & Vitamin B if I wanted it, but that sounds extra.

I’m looking at this wall & there are some drawings I’d keep. My neighbors already cleaned their walls. Yesterday they were sitting outside of my door for a while. One of them asked me about what happened in court, so I told her.

        “Do you believe in God?” She asked.

        “Of course,” I answered confidently. That is a much easier question than whether I believe in Jesus as Christ.

        “Then you’ll be alright.”

        “Some people don’t. It says, ‘God is Here,’” I indicated an area next to the door, “…& someone scribbled it out.”

        “People do stupid stuff.” She said quickly, then told her roommate what we were talking about.

Still no sign of the sun.

        “Count time,” is announced at pastel sunrise. There’s no telling what numerical time it is until we get our tablets. Most of the officers won’t tell us. Yesterday we got our tablets at 11:00 a.m. That’s how I listen to the radio. I also play Sudoku on my tablet. It’s better than my phone because my phone has neither Sudoku nor FM radio, as far as I know.

When I get my tablet, I hear that a 19-year-old Palestinian boy was shot & killed for throwing a heavy rock at a car. I also discover that a Refuge Recovery podcast is available on my tablet & I listen to a talk by Noah, a meditation, & then a Q&A. Someone asks him about how we can get “happy” out of the experience of trauma. He answers that our past trauma will always be our past trauma, but we can meet those memories with compassion. Those traumas & all the suffering that exists in the world are not excuses that can prevent us from being happy…or something like that.

        I feel guilty about my prosperity & how easily I can get everything I need in a world with so much inequality & lack. I feel more helpless against the forces that create suffering for unfortunate sentient beings than I do against alcohol, marijuana & tobacco combined.

        John Oliver is on Capitol Public Radio. He’s talking about the writer’s strike. I tried to go see his show in St. Louis a month ago but failed. He says that the profits from his stand-up shows went to pay his staff during the strike.

A month ago, I was uncorking a 375 mL bottle of wine in preparation for my two-hour wait for the Los Angeles bound Greyhound bus. The station used to be downtown on L Street & now it’s at 420 Richards Boulevard. I also planned to finish the last of my marijuana before the bus arrived.

I’m on my way to St. Louis to see a John Oliver stand-up comedy show. I left my kid at home where my dad was staying & caught a Lyft to the bus station. A parked car, a taxi, & a woman with luggage were out in front of the station. I asked the woman if the inside of the station was open. She said that it wasn’t. She also told me that she was waiting out front because people in the back of the station were smoking dope.

Understanding that she wouldn’t appreciate it if I smoked a spliff right there, I walked to the street where there was a local bus stop with a bench & I rolled one up. I was almost finished smoking it when a greyhound arrived, so I put it out & rushed to the back of the station where the busses park. There were dozens of people back there & some of them did seem to be smoking dope. 

There was only one table & no one else was using it so I sat there & rolled up the last of my marijuana. I didn’t go all the way back to the street because I was afraid my bus would arrive. I just leaned against a bike rack on the side of the station away from other passengers with my 50-pound backpack. 

I finished my smoke before the next bus arrived & wandered back to the bus stalls where I milled about for a while. The L.A. bound bus arrived nearly empty so that I got two seats all to myself where I tried to sleep until morning. I expected St. Louis to get cold at night so I had a parka that I used as a blanket. 

I gave up on getting any more sleep when I realized that we were going through the Tehachapi mountains. There was a transfer at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles to a bus that was supposed to take me the rest of the way to St. Louis. I used the restroom inside the station & bought a Wetzel’s hot dog during the layover. When I returned to the Greyhound stop, the bus was there & we left right on time. 

Someone was in my seat, but it was fine, there were plenty of empty seats… until we got to San Bernardino. There a woman boarded & informed me that I was in her seat. It ruffled my feathers a little since someone was also in my seat, but she said she needed the window seat or she’d get motion sickness. Keeping my chagrin to myself, I started packing up the things I had arranged around me to pass the time. A book on how to learn Hindi, my journal, crochet, headphones, & of course, my lunch pail, all went back into my backpack. I wondered where I’d go now that most of the window seats were taken & I needed the sunlight to do my crochet. 

I was working on a pair of fingerless gloves & the thumb increase was giving me trouble. I had been off by one stitch all day. I tried adding & subtracting repeatedly but couldn’t seem to get the right count. I could’ve fudged it, but I wanted to get a perfect count & I needed the sunlight for that. 

I waddled to the front of the bus with all of my luggage to ask the driver about the seating assignments & saw an empty seat next to his lunch pail, which he had buckled in. 

“Can I sit here?” I asked him. 

He looked back toward his lunch, with apprehension. “I guess since she’s already sitting there.” He was referring to a large blonde woman with a knee injury sitting in the seat right behind him. 

“Thank you.” I tried not to disturb his lunch as I settled in. 

People were talking in the middle of the bus, but the front was quiet. The blonde woman had a few short conversations on the phone about how she would get home from the station in Phoenix & that was it. 

Somewhere around Blythe, California I finally got my crochet count right & that was when the bus started to break down. First, it started beeping so the driver pulled over to the side of the interstate & got out. The blonde woman knew exactly what was wrong,

“We’re overheating, that’s what that beeping was.” The blonde woman turned into a supervisor assessing all the gauges from her seat, even taking photos.

When the driver returned, he tried to get us to a better place to park the bus & wait for a mechanic or a replacement bus. He passed the first exit because there weren’t any services. The one after that was Quartzite. The driver exited & parked at a Love’s truck stop there. 

We had already stopped in Indio for a dinner break, but this truck stop was way better. I bought a salad. One woman had tried & failed to buy beer on our dinner break but was able to talk a truck stop clerk into selling her a beer since the bus wasn’t expected to depart anytime soon. The clerks knew that Greyhound passengers aren’t supposed to drink alcohol on the bus. That surprised me because I’m used to Amtrak where you can buy drinks on the train. 

I had a small bottle of whiskey in my backpack that I guessed I would save for St. Louis, but as I finished my salad, I asked my neighbors, “Who wants a shot?”

“I don’t know if they sell liquor here.” The blonde woman replied. 

A man behind me whom I hadn’t noticed, heard our conversation & laughed. 

The blonde woman continued, “You can’t drink on the bus.” 

“We’ll be sober by the time we leave,” I said because rumor had it that the Greyhound replacement bus wouldn’t be there until 3:00 a.m. & it was only 7:30 p.m. 

The man behind me laughed again. I got the impression that they’d be just as much fun without alcohol, so I let it be. 

Just then the driver jumped through the front door & up the stairs to turn the bus back on again.

He was excited, “I found a mechanic.”

He informed us as he rushed back down the stairs. We got hopeful & I started looking around at what was going on.

“Maybe it’s a hose. I hit a clump of dirt in my 280-Z crossing the coast ranges on 399 & made it all the way to Laytonville before I absolutely had to stop because the engine was smoking. Luckily, I found some guys who found the leak & it was close enough to an end that they just unfastened it, cut it & reattached it with a pocketknife so that I could get back home.” 

“That’s probably what it is,” the man behind me said. 

One of the passengers started washing the windows on the bus. The driver made a large purchase from the Love’s store. The mechanic had to leave once for a tow job. Long story short, it took a while, but the driver got us going again. My contribution was to ask the Love’s staff to make an announcement for everyone to return to the bus & then we were on our way to Phoenix. 

My plan was to be in St. Louis Missouri for the John Oliver comedy show the following evening. In Phoenix, I found out that I wouldn’t be able to get there until the day after that. Since there was no point in getting there after the show, I caught a taxi to a local hotel. 

After calling around to hotels near the Greyhound station & finding them all full, I expanded my search. There was one hotel close to the Heard Museum with vacancies & that’s where I had the taxi drop me off. Secured with a room for the night, I opened my small bottle & turned on the TV. I ran out of Coke before I ran out of whiskey, which is when I went for a walk.

Outside, someone was pushing a shopping cart down the street. I asked them where the Museum was & if I could walk there. He said that I could and confirmed its direction. After walking a couple of blocks in that direction, I decided not to go that night. When I got back to the hotel, I met the security guard who was from West Africa. We talked about African politics for a while. I was concerned about whether Niger would be able to free itself from French occupation. Finally, I bought another bottle of Coke at the front desk & went back to my room without further incident. 

The next day I got breakfast at IHOP before catching a Lyft to the Heard. I thought I was being funny when I told the Heard staff that my great-grandma was a Navajo princess & a weaver. However, they knew exactly what I was talking about & without skipping a beat, one of the curators ushered me to the bookstore. 

As it turned out the couple who collected & researched several of my great-grandmother’s tapestries had donated their collection to the Heard Museum a few years ago. About a year ago the Heard published an entire book on circa 1900s-era Navajo weavings. At least three of my family members are featured in the book, my great-grandmother, her older sister, & my great-grandfather, who made them famous by displaying their artwork at his Gallegos Trading Post in New Mexico. The museum gifted me a copy of the book & I bought a couple of t-shirts for my kid.

It took me a few days to get over the residual disappointment of missing the John Oliver show, but I was meant to visit the Heard Museum. It truly brought me to tears. I tried not to take Greyhound again, but it was the only way out of Phoenix. Amtrak was sold out. I took the bus to Flagstaff, then connected with Amtrak’s Southwest Chief to Los Angeles, & rode the Coast Starlight home.

October 7, 2023

“Acting more than any other art is a demonstration of rebellion against the mundanity of everyday existence.” -Micheal MacLiammoir

I’m reading a book of quotations & waiting for the floor to dry in my cell. The book is called Break a Leg! A Dictionary of Theatrical Quotations; compiled by Michele Brown; Introduced by Gyles Brandreth.

        I felt afraid when I woke up this morning. The alcohol must be completely out of my system. There isn’t anything to be afraid of in here except for injustice inherent in the system. Over the past 15 years of my life in downtown Sacramento, I’ve gotten used to a lot of things that seemed atrocious to me when I was new to town.

Some of the women here have told me hellish stories. There’s one woman who had her three children taken by Child Welfare Services because both she & her husband were arrested at the same time & they have no family in this country. Another woman had been drugged nightly & trafficked by a family member without knowing it until she woke up in a ditch one morning. Someone else lost parental rights to her five children over years of addiction.

There are fliers about programs that help stop the intergenerational trauma of incarceration so that after they’ve torn you away from family who depend on you, you can become a statistic for grant funding.

Yesterday & today, I’ve been cleaning. I started with the walls, just the bottom half. I’ve cleaned off “…Is Here,” “Don’t be black in Sacramento County,” “the system is broken,” “Violated, I was violated, that man lied,” “6 days to go,” “Let me out of here,” the serenity prayer, & various names in hearts.

I’ve cleaned my bunk. It’s great to get the tape residue off the window glass, but the outside is still filthy. I’ve cleaned the desk, the light above the desk & the floor. All of that takes two cleaning pods diluted in water. The cell is the size of my bathroom & laundry room at home.

This is when I get a cellmate who’s messy right? The perpetual humor of the gods requires it, knock on wood. Hopefully, we all just keep making the best of everything. Today, I’m making a body mist with the zest of the peel from my breakfast orange.

Orange Body Splash Recipe:

• First, wash your hands thoroughly, especially under your nails.
• Second, clean out a polystyrene cup or milk carton. Let it sit with some soapy water inside to get the smell out, then rinse the soap out.
• Third, wash the peel of an orange. It could still be on the orange or already peeled off. I peeled mine.
• Fourth, use your fingernails to slice tiny chunks of zest from the outer peel, favoring the brightest orange sections. Collect the tiny chunks in your cup or carton. Stop if the skin under your nails gets irritated.
• Fifth, add fresh water to the container where you have collected your orange zest. Cover your container if you can & set it in a safe place where it won’t spill. I set mine on the tiny metal shelf in the wall above the desk.
• Shelf life: about two days.

October 8, 2023

I got to talk with my kid last night. They said they’d take care of my cats today. My apartment is probably messy. I don’t know how I left it. I hope that the door was locked. It should be since I planned to leave town. It seems like there should be an animal rights organization helping incarcerated people make sure that our pets are taken care of.

One of the ladies here is pregnant with twins. I was pregnant with my kid when I had to turn myself in to the Coconino County jail in Arizona. I was there for 30 days. This pregnant lady has been here longer than that & she gets out on Tuesday.

My kid is an absolute miracle. We went to jail together three times before they were even born. The first was after a visit to my great aunt’s apartment in Chico. My husband & I had been trying to have a baby after a year of marriage. My uterine lining was late to shed, but not late enough for me to accurately test for pregnancy. No one in our circle drank alcohol at that point, but there was so much pressure to smoke marijuana that I just stayed away from them by visiting my elders.

On my way back to Yolo County, I was stopped by a Glenn County Sheriff’s deputy. He claimed that I was speeding on a country road in the middle of the night. In case you don’t know, those roads get dark at night & I had a really bad experience with Arizona law enforcement less than a year earlier, so I was terror-stricken. It got really bad when the deputy asked me to exit my vehicle & started handcuffing my wrists behind my back, for speeding. I ran out of his reach so he tasered me, which didn’t incapacitate me, but I stopped evading him. Recently I read a case study on women who were tasered while they were pregnant & it said that 71% of those pregnancies ended in miscarriage.

The deputy suspected me to be under the influence of a controlled substance, so I was transported to a clinic & tested. When all the test results came back negative, the official charge was simply resisting arrest. They thought it was strange that I was terrified to get arrested for no reason. How do they expect people to feel about getting arrested?

Our second jail visit was in Yolo County about two months later. I knew that I was pregnant by then because I had taken a home pregnancy test. My husband & I were splitting our time between an apartment in Woodland & D-Q University, a local non-profit dedicated to education for Native Americans.

One morning after my husband had already left for D-Q, our kitten, Garbo & I got into my red mercury mariner hybrid & drove out to D-Q for a breakfast gathering. There were more people there than usual. Garbo & I weren’t part of all the planning that seemed to be happening, so we just walked around visiting with people. It was fortunate that Garbo was on a leash & harness because it saved me an extra fee when we both got detained.

Less than an hour later, the Yolo County Sheriff’s posse arrived. They had our school surrounded. I saw them drive up from the ceremonial grounds first, then I looked to the front driveway & saw a large truck approach. Eighteen of us would be arrested & taken to jail in that truck. Garbo was taken to the pound.  It was all at the behest of two D-Q board members who also happened to work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The board chairperson made a public statement disavowing the raid, but that was after the fact.

At the jail, I started having spotted bleeding. I was more than a month pregnant & I thought I was losing my baby so I asked to lie down, but the officers told me that I wasn’t allowed unless I could take a pregnancy test. Since I had already used the restroom, which is how I knew that I was spotting, I couldn’t do that. When I started crying, they isolated me & checked on me regularly to make sure that I didn’t lie down. I lay down anyway.

Our third jail stay was the result of the first two. My probation for an incident in Arizona was revoked, so I turned myself into the Coconino County jail in May 2008 to serve 30 days. I’d cry at night in my cell, but I enjoyed it too. It was maximum security & we got to spend the whole day in a common area that eight of us shared. I was there for my 25^th birthday.

I can see the reflection of the sunset in the rainfall windows outside. The light is off in my cell because just as I predicted, I got a cellmate. She’s processing her recent arrest trauma by telling me about it in bits & pieces. I’m glad that I was here when she first arrived so that I could tell her about what I’ve learned so far, but she already stepped on the desk with her shoes. She’s jittery & she apologizes all the time.

Orange Body Splash by Slug’uh is an outstanding success. There’s so much of it that after using it on my face, neck, & arms, the cup is still nearly full. I offered to share it with my cellmate, but she has perfect skin & doesn’t need it. I’m going to start a little operation here; sharing my orange body splash recipe for free so I don’t have to pay taxes.

        For my dayroom exercise, I do two sets of stairs, 20 laps of walking & five sets of leg lifts before taking a shower. While talking & getting to know my cellmate yesterday, I made a crochet hair tie out of plastic strips torn from a maxi-pad bag. I French braid my hair after my shower & use the crochet hair tie at the end. My cellmate likes to play dominos & she’s good at it, so we play a few games. She beats me at first, but I get better with practice. I try calling home but don’t get through.

Perhaps I should elaborate on the Arizona incident. It happened on May 5^th, 2007. My husband & I had only been married for a week. We were living in Williams, Arizona where I was working at a local motel.

I said something that my husband didn’t like. I don’t remember what it was, but my husband attacked me. After hitting me in the face repeatedly, which knocked me into several walls. I managed to dial 9-1-1 & a dispatcher answered then he snatched my phone away before I could speak.

        During the pause, my husband became remorseful, in his way. He repeated “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over & over again. He asked me to “please kill” him. When I refused, he went to the kitchen of the motel to get a knife. I listened from our room as he rummaged through drawers & cabinets, returning to me with a table knife. He said it was all he could find & offered it to me. I refused it. He placed it in my right hand & closed my fingers around it.

        He stood right in front of me, staring me down & I got the impression that he wasn’t going to let me go anywhere, when all of a sudden, he got enraged that I used the knife on him. He attacked me again. I was on the floor when he stopped & threw my phone at me. I called 9-1-1. I saw blood & wanted to get help for him this time. Later I found out that he wasn’t bleeding from where I jabbed him & the knife was never found.

        Within minutes, the Williams police arrived & made things much worse. It was a deputy & the chief. The deputy flipped me onto a concrete parking space header & when I complained about a painful bump swelling up on my head, the chief claimed that I had hit him. The district attorney wanted to drop a litany of charges for, domestic violence, escape, & resisting arrest so that I would plead to one charge of aggravated assault on an officer. That was the only thing that I hadn’t done, but I cooperated & pled “no contest.” If I had completed my probation, it would have been dropped to a misdemeanor, but Glenn County & D-Q University prevented that.

I find my people

Golden light reflects off of the western faces of neighboring buildings as the sun descends past the horizon.

Perhaps I should explain why I’m still here since I was released on my own recognizance for delaying the Sac Valley Station bound light rail train. I have 17 days to serve for a DUI that I got on Ash Wednesday in 2022.

I was driving home after stopping for a bite & some drinks. I was seven blocks from my house & my blood alcohol content was .11%. It was higher than I thought & I almost got T-boned by a huge white truck & died. The traffic light in front of me was green when I looked down at my stereo to change the station, but by the time I looked back up it was red & there was a huge white truck to my right. To the right of that truck was a California Highway Patrol vehicle, so I immediately pulled over & asked to take a breathalyzer.  

        I was being impulsive. I had a couple of shots with a couple of beers at dinner & then another shot & beer after dinner at a music venue. The impulsive part was that I jettisoned out of the venue when someone tried to talk to me. He practically propositioned me, but I guess that he was flirting.

        I have tried talking to so many people in this town about world peace & finding some way to implement an alternative to current capitalism but with little success. It’s much easier to get propositioned.

        Sometimes I lament that I’m missing my Marx to co-write our revolutionary manifesto of peace & compassion. Other times I find my people. Jail is one of these places for me because we are all tragically aware of the problems that embattle our society, such as the justice system. Downstairs in processing, some lady inmates told me that they picture me in lively discourse with men wearing brimmed hats & smoking cigars. I laughed because that would be perfect as long as it’s outside. I can’t stand smoking indoors.

        I think of my criminal history as the story of all the law enforcement officers who ever arrested me. Think of me as a non-white, non-male Jack Karoac of sorts except with cops & convicts instead of beatniks. Unfortunately, sometime between the Beatnik generation & today, it became illegal to wander around a city aimlessly & drunk. No matter, it adds another dazzling facet to the diamond of life.

The most logical of my arrests are for drunken mayhem. They are quantifiable which sets my mind at ease after all the corruption I’ve witnessed. For instance, in April of 2007 in Arizona. I was heading back to California from Texas with about an ounce of some Mexican brick because I ran out of decent California flower.

        I had met a couple of hippies in Texas, in a dimly lit bar with a bright lamp directing its light onto the green felt of a pool table. We played a few games. Afterward, they invited me back to their place for a toke, which I accepted because I had just run out of flower.

        One of them snuck off while we were telling stories around a large water pipe in their living room. The pipe was packed with some Mexican brick weed, but I didn’t complain. We were having a great time.

Suddenly, the one in the living room thought of asking the other one, sitting at a computer in an alcove between the living room & kitchen,  “Whatcha doin’?”

“She’s Nas’”

“You Goddamn–sona’bitch!”

The one at the computer sat silent & frozen, looking at us. The one sitting in the living room started shaking his head & looked around. He took a rather large bag of the Mexican brick off the coffee table & held it out to me.

“Take it & get outta here.”

“No, that’s alright,” I said, really not wanting the brick & confused about what upset him.

“Take it & just GO.” He thrust the bag at me again & shook his head as if in disbelief.

I accepted the bag reluctantly & decided to go. As I was leaving, I heard him yelling some more.

That big bag of brick was still in my car when an Arizona trooper pulled me over as I was crossing Arizona heading back to California where I knew I could get decent flower from a store. He told me that he had received a phone call about my driving which I could understand since I drove 55 miles per hour in those days. It was because of something I had read about fuel efficiency, but other drivers would lose their minds sometimes.

Possession of marijuana was a ticketable offense, but I couldn’t read the ticket, therefore, I didn’t think I should sign it. A few weeks before that, my ex had gotten mad at me & stomped on my glasses at D-Q University, so I left & drove cross country. It was so abrupt that my mom had reported me missing, but I guess the trooper didn’t know it, so he arrested me.

In the report, the trooper claimed that I had been in the custody of a US Forest Service officer named Gretchen Lampe. That was false, so I wondered why he lied. He could have arrested me for transporting a controlled substance across state lines, that would have made sense. All of that happened in 2007 & medical marijuana hadn’t been legal in Arizona since 1998. It wouldn’t become legal again until 2010.  

I don’t understand it, but that crooked bodhisattva kept me out of federal prison & made sure that I didn’t miss a beautiful Spring in Flag. After a brief detainment, I was released from the Coconino County Jail on the night before Easter.

October 9, 2023

“No one can fully appreciate the fatuity of human nature until he has spent some time in a box office” -St. John Ervine

Following breakfast there is darkness. Some light streams in through two narrow windows in the cell door, but mostly, I sit in darkness, talking to my cellmate about historical racism whenever she says anything that lets me know she is still awake.

        She’s part Lebanese from ancestors who migrated to Mexico before her mother immigrated to the United States. Lebanon has been in the news lately due to the war in the Gaza Strip, or is it just Gaza?

        She wants the light off, at some point I can’t stand it anymore & I turn the light on to read. I read until roll call. There are clouds spread across the sky, obscuring the sierras. The closest ones are thin but still fluffy, making a spectacular display of pastel pink, purple, & blue.

        Several times a day I count the number of days until my release. Today the 10-day countdown begins. I was 60 pounds overweight when I got here & I’d like to be 20 pounds lighter when I get out, but I’ll take whatever I can get.

My cellmate is emotionally distraught.

She says, “It isn’t fair.”

She seems to have been in a fight or two with her boyfriend & a neighbor. Now she’s facing a probation violation.

I tell her that “at least it will get taken care of.”

She’s been crying since lunch.

        “It’s injustice,” I tell her.

        “I know because I didn’t even do anything.”

        “No, it’s injustice for everyone whether they’re in here for something they did or didn’t do.”

        “But I didn’t do anything, it was that nosy neighbor who doesn’t mind his own business. I’m supposed to be taking care of my mom. She’s handicapped. She needs me.”

        “No one should be here. It takes us all away from people who need us, who rely on us. They want us to feel guilty about that too, but the problem is this system. It’s supposed to take us away to rehabilitate us, but it doesn’t even do that. True justice would be restitution, making us of service to those we’ve harmed or offended in some way & those who need us. Instead, it uses us as conviction rates.”

        “But I shouldn’t even be here, I’m so mad at that bitch-ass. If I had a warrant, why didn’t they pick me up when I had a chunk taken out of my eyebrow & bruises on my neck? He ran away, he just keeps getting away with it.”

        “I know exactly how you feel. My ex-husband hit me in the head so many times that I got a temporary stutter & the police wrote in their reports that I said he didn’t. I didn’t know that until this year when they finally let me have the police reports. The police falsified police records to cover up domestic violence & I think it’s even worse because the worst one was a policewoman. The hospital staff wouldn’t even assess my injuries & I thought they were just being lazy, but it was because of what she put in the report. I’ve never been injured like that before.”

        “Yep.” She nods emphatically.

        “I felt so insecure like maybe there was something I did to make them think I was crazy, like madly tapping my fingers, but no. It was just lies. My husband took all of the complaints he ever had about me in 3 years together & as if he knew that wouldn’t be enough to get me committed to an insane asylum, he made stuff up on top of that. He said that I slapped him & pulled his hair. I wish I did that…” I pause because I keep forgetting that the police could have lied about what he said too. “…So, there’s no evidence of any injuries because his were made up & the police covered up mine.”

        “There’s evidence of mine! CSI took pictures of my neck.”

        “That’s good, YOU have to put all of that together & present it.”

        “I was going to get a lawyer.”

        “They’ll just bargain, you have to gather the evidence for them. That’s what I’m doing. Since all my stuff happened more than 10 years ago, some of the officers are retired but I’m slowly making all of my reports to the Department of Justice.”

        “You can do that?”

        “That’s all I can do. I already made a report to the Arizona Department of Justice about the chief of police of Williams, Arizona who said that I had hit him even though I didn’t.”

        “I’m going to do that because…” She gets cut off by an announcement over the P.A. system.

It’s “Chowtime.”

“You’re going to throw out the trash?” She asks me.

“Empty it.” I correct her because we need to save the bag.

“No, the soup.” She’s reminding me about my cup of soup & leftover sandwich from lunch.

“Oh yeah.” I would have forgotten.

When the door “pops,” we open it & wedge a roll of toilet paper between the door & the frame to keep it from closing. I toss out the cup & sandwich then get in line for dinner. One way or another, it’s analogous that this jail system relies so much on toilet paper rolls to function. After fetching our dinner platters, we return to our cell & dislodge the roll.

This is the best meal yet. White rice with chicken & gravy, green beans, bread, tomatoes, & an apple crumble. I like the tomatoes & rice, a lot, & that’s all I eat because it’s enough.

It’s Indigenous Peoples Day or Columbus Day, whatever you prefer. I get most of my Indigeneity from my dad. He’s Nomlaki. I learned to say all six of my tribes before I went to kindergarten so that I could introduce myself properly, which was strange to other kindergarteners. I grew up in the suburbs of Davis.

Australia is considering a modification to its constitution that will recognize Indigenous Australians for the first time. Terra Nullius is how British invaders classified Australia to take it over & subjugate its Indigenous inhabitants in the 1700s. Australia votes on the referendum this Saturday. This recognition is paradoxical because it should have been necessary for the existence of Australia from the other way around. I’m going to stop recognizing Australia as a country if they don’t recognize the Indigenous nations of their stolen country.

I have found an eBook on the life of Leonardo Da Vinci on my tablet. It lists his Maxims as: “The eye is the window of the soul. Tears come from the heart & not from the brain. The natural desire of good men is knowledge. A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not. Every difficulty can be overcome by effort. Time abides long enough for those who make use of it. Miserable men, how often do you enslave yourselves to gain money!”

October 10, 2023

“All comedians are anarchists” -Ken Dodd

“A farce or a comedy is best played: a tragedy is best read at home” -Abraham Lincoln to John Hay after seeing Edwin Booth in The Merchant of Venice 1863 (Lincoln was assassinated by Booth’s brother in 1865).”

Incarceration has become a routine. I have nine days to go & tomorrow will be my halfway point. All in all, on this timeline I’ll get out two days sooner than if I had turned myself in when I planned to. I’m starting to find it hard to tell one day from another.

        The night before last, I had a dream about a subway system. I was stuck outside of a stop that was out of service & I wanted to get somewhere. The next stop was just a short way away, but I kept forgetting on the way & walking back to the one that was out of service.

        It’s like my arrest. I’d like to think that I helped someone catch the light rail train if they were running late & would have missed it otherwise. I’m afraid that I could have made someone late for something like court. 

        I had been waiting around all night for the Capitol Corridor to start running & by 7:45 a.m. it was. Something that people don’t know about jail inmates is that we are very mission-oriented. Some of these ladies gave up on school “smarts” because their teachers didn’t set consistent achievable goals but they can get things done. My goal was simply to get a bike from Sacramento to Davis & when that became an impossibility, I gave up on everything.

        I told the officers that I was lingering in the crosswalk because the light rail tends to take off too quickly. They moved me out of the path of the light rail train without spilling my coffee. Then I told them to look me up because I was supposed to be in jail already & I would have been except that a lawyer whom I tried to meet with on September 29^th, the day I was supposed to turn myself in, had to reschedule at the last minute for the afternoon of October 3^rd.

        The officer looking me up took a quick scroll & without even looking me in the face again, he began the arrest. I could have explained everything, but he wasn’t going to let me. I begged not to be arrested, but it made no difference. 

Afternoon light from an overcast sky hits the metal cell door where the paint has chipped off, there are patches of rust, & the exposed metal is dented. It looks like an abalone shell. I stare at it until the door pops for dayroom.

        Every time a woman gets released, we tell them not to come back. Usually, they’ll agree. Today a woman told us that she would be back, she was smiling. I thought she said that she’d be back if “there’s nothing else to do.” My cellmate thought that she said she’d be back if “she stays with this dude.” It’s hard to hear things clearly in the dayroom because of echoes from the TVs, & conversations.

After dayroom, the golden sunlight disappears from the rainfall windows & rain starts to fall from the clouds. My cellmate tells me. When I look out the window I see the wet streets below & it makes me want to go outside. I love this weather.

        She had court today & she has to serve a minimum of 60 days because she failed to complete her work program. She hasn’t received her tablet in 3 days, so she can’t order anything from Aramark, our commissary app. I’m worried that she’ll have another breakdown from her toothache. She has a problem with her teeth so last night she couldn’t calm down until she got some pain relievers from one of the other ladies in dayroom. Pain relievers are free on Aramark, but orders take a few weeks to arrive.

        We were supposed to get new tablets today, so our old ones didn’t get charged. Around 3:00 p.m. our old tablets are distributed & mine is 45% charged. It’s not going to last until 11:00 p.m. when the apps automatically shut off. I listen to news about the war in the holy land & read an eBook of the Vedas then I realize that mine will turn off soon. I spend the rest of the tablet’s battery life listening to a Refuge Recovery podcast & writing by-hand.

        Mindfulness seems like the best answer that I have received in response to my persistent concerns about binge drinking. Refuge Recovery encourages mindfulness to relieve anything that we do out of impulsivity. Noah calls choices that cause unnecessary hurt, unskillful.

        I have spent so much time seeking help for these concerns, but I sought answers in the wrong places. Some people have a bigger problem with alcohol than I do & they don’t even drink alcohol. Some people will never understand why my problem is with smoking marijuana. I’m just going to listen to the podcast & drink water until bedtime.

October 11, 2023

“Only two roles of dramatic criticism matter. One. Decide what the playwright was trying to do & pronounce how well he has done it. Two. Determine whether the well-done thing was worth doing at all” -James Agate ‘Ego’ 8, 1945

“You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table” -Samuel Johnson

Drawn to my window by the sound of a train’s whistle, I see that the Amtrak has started running for the day. From here I can see the Eastern end of the Amtrak platform where another train remains after the other train has gone by.

        Dawn has not yet disturbed the darkness of night. More distant now, the train whistles. Otherwise, the only sounds are the constant air conditioning & occasional groan of a jail door.

        Breakfast has been served & I think about my exercises. I also think about the stratification of classes worldwide & how both, bottom-up & top-down discrimination, maintain it. I took a break from exercising yesterday. Today is my halfway point for this jail stay & I plan to resume my routine tomorrow, arduously.

I have 100 pages left of theatrical quotes & I have begun reading Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

“When in disgrace with fortune & men’s eyes” -Shakespeare

When I was a child, I couldn’t understand how blond hair could grow out of a person’s head. I married a man with black hair & green eyes. His hair is curly like my cousins’, but he has light skin like me.

When my white-passing mother died, I found out how differently Davis treated my child & me without her there. I guess I thought that I might be white-passing because of the way that my darker-skinned family members tease me about my light skin. It has made me wish that my skin was darker. I wish I could have kept my kid from feeling that way.

        This is one of the ways that we harm ourselves. We are hurt by oppression until we end the oppression, or else the hurt will invite the oppression to stay. It can fuse with our social norms & values but it will never change the human condition & the habitat that we require for survival. The idea that any biological characteristic or socioeconomic circumstance can make one person more “valuable” than another is a complete obliteration of common sense & community.

        People don’t realize that capitalism & communism are two fruits of the same tree branch that have mutated into our current economic system. Capitalism hosts corporations, which distribute profits to shareholders. Socialism disavows private property, though we still need to live on land.

Many tribes own corporations that distribute profits to all tribal members. Tribal land is often held in trust with the U.S. federal government, which can lease our trust land to clear-cutting & mining corporations. That’s where about 60% of U.S. domestic gas & oil comes from when politicians decide to bring down gas prices.

October 12, 2023

“Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich” -Sarah Bernhardt

According to the morning news, there was a shooting on J Street. I got arrested on J Street. I have been worried about my kid recently because when I try to call, I can’t get through. Now I’m worried about my partner, but I can’t call him before I get ahold of my kid again. We only get three free two-minute phone calls in here.

        I embarrassed him, so maybe he’s just my partner because he hasn’t had the chance to break up with me yet. My child gets embarrassed by me too. I don’t understand embarrassment. I’ve been teased & shamed for every little thing since I was a child, so I’m numb to it. There’s something about my individual life experience that makes otherness feels like part of my identity.

        Being understood can seem so far away that it precludes explanation. People can be so convinced that their snap judgment about the image of me is an irrefutable reality that it doesn’t seem worth contesting. An officer raiding my pockets like a petty thief to arrest me as though the fate of Sacramento was at stake, seems acceptable, but my expectation that I should be able to possess my own cell phone & catch a train to Davis with a bike is wild.

        I wonder why they derided my despair at capture. My arresting officers kept telling others at the jail that I was faking it when my muscles refused to work. One of my arresting officers repeatedly said that I had been standing on my own before they arrested me as if the arrest was inconsequential to the way I felt.  

        Once in the back of the police vehicle I completely gave in to gravity. At the jail, they transferred me from the vehicle to a netted chair. I was still handcuffed. At one point it felt like one of the officers lifting me would break my arm.

That’s when another officer told everyone to, “stop.”

My eyelids were closed & they wouldn’t open. It was probably possible for me to open my eyes, but I would have had to feel differently than I did. I said that I needed to use the restroom because I did, but I couldn’t stand. I don’t know what I expected to happen. They just told me that it would have to wait. When I couldn’t hold it anymore, I got their attention again. It was also because breathing was causing me pain in the position I was in.

        They lifted me up again & told me that they would take the handcuffs off if I could make it to the restroom.

I just kept saying “It’s so sad,” & crying.

They agreed with me, “I know,” which made me cry more because it was more kindness than I expected from anyone there. They said encouraging things to me until my body was willing to stand.

I made it to the restroom & they took off the handcuffs. My right arm was so sore that I couldn’t move it even with the handcuffs off, but my eyes were open & after I used the restroom, someone took my blood pressure.

After my recovery, I was put in a cell by myself. When the inmate cafeteria worker showed up with sandwiches, he gave me a stack of about six peanut butter & jelly. Thank goodness I have long hair because I had to use it to cover my arms to stay warm.

No one alive has ever had that much trouble trying to take a bike to their kid! I gave up on that too. The officers made a big deal about the bike, but honestly my phone cost about the same & they didn’t help me with that at all! Upon my arrest I didn’t have a warrant yet, they found that while I was being booked. I don’t know if the jail would have held the bike this long. Plus, it had a crick in one of the pedals that always made me think it was about to break & the kickstand would scratch the ground wherever I parked.

On the 5^th day of the war in Gaza, I wonder how Israel will write their version of history.

RUG BURNT

October 13, 2023

Last night I slept well. My dreams were of riding a bike around the Capitol & deciding what to get for dessert. I gave it a lot of thought & decided on a piece of cake. I kept myself from taking long naps yesterday & ran up & down the stairs 40 times. The downside is that I’m too well-rested to go back to sleep right now.

It’s too dark to read so I do some sitting exercises. My cellmate & I have been getting to know each other better. This is what I love about jail. She thinks that I can lose 15 pounds while I’m here & I think I can lose 20. She finally got to see medical for her teeth, but just to confirm that there is a problem.

She says that they keep bringing up windows with a crane on the construction site behind us, precipitating windows. She also says that the jail used to be a red building across 7^th Street & this place used to be an empty lot.

We know some of the same people, like, Jose Montoya who died about 10 years ago. She was friends with one of his family members & I met him at Luna’s Café & Juice Bar on 16^th Street. I think I was wearing a D-Q University t-shirt, so he struck up a conversation with me about it.

It’s Friday the 13^th of October, which means I have six more days to meet my weight goal & I’m going for it. Meals in here are awful so dieting is easy. I’ve doubled my stair runs since last week. The bigger my calves get, the thinner my ankles look, just an observation.

The sky is starting to light up. One of the Amtrak trains is arriving. Work has begun on the building behind the jail & someone is going through its rooms with a flashlight. Reflections of streetlights & the headlights of vehicles traveling along I-5 look pretty in those rainfall windows.

        An announcement tells us that we must be fully dressed for “count time.” Fully dressed means wearing our orange pants & striped shirt. We also have more comfortable cotton t-shirts, but those aren’t enough for count time. They also say that we must be sitting up or they’ll take away dayroom, which would violate our rights if they followed through. Inmates are entitled to a certain amount of time outside of our cells according to news radio.

        For a few days I was so tired that I thought I might be exercising too much & eating too little. If I only eat what I really like, it isn’t very much. When breakfast is terrible, I drink the milk. We get two milk boxes in the morning, but I think we should get one with breakfast & one with lunch because they don’t last until lunch or dinner even though some of the other ladies say they do.

        Last Friday, four other ladies & I were waiting for court & complaining about our charges. That was sad, so I changed the subject by talking about my diet & how I plan to use this time to get in shape.

        “Why? It all comes off when you get out anyway.” Another inmate replied.

        I looked at her for a moment because I knew there was a miscommunication, I just didn’t know what it was yet, “Because I was 60 pounds overweight when I got here.”

        “What are you here for?”

        “I think I was being a nuisance, but they say drunk & disorderly.”

        “Where do you live?”

        “Downtown. I live downtown & I got arrested on J Street.”

        “I used to live downtown. I had a tenant on 15^th Street, but I had to leave because he was falling in love.”

        That woman was very confusing to me. She was petite with blonde hair that brushed her shoulders. Her skin was worn, but she was beautiful when she smiled, which she was doing then.

        I asked, “What’s worse, being a nuisance or drunk & disorderly, & how drunk do I have to have been to be considered “drunk?”

        Some of them shrugged.

        The blonde woman, who was sitting across from me, continued, “I couldn’t do it, he was falling in love & what am I going to do, be a stepmom?”

        I lifted my eyebrows & shrugged. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I can relate to running away from love. Who knows why we do that?

        “This is a fancy jail.” I stated, “The views are like hotel views.”

        “What views? All you can see are those two little bars.” The blonde woman said.

        “You don’t have a big window overlooking Sacramento?” I asked her with confusion.

        “Just those two little bars in the door.”

        “Those are to the inside,” I told her realizing what she was talking about. Then I queried the other women for some reassurance. “Am I the only one with a window to the outside?”

        Another woman on the bench across from me answered, shaking then nodding her head, “No, I have a window.”

        I had to think about that conversation for a few days to figure out that the blonde woman is houseless on the outside.

October 14, 2023

“Definition of a musical—disorderly conduct occasionally interrupted by talk”

-L.L. Levinson

Last night’s conversations were amazing. All we were missing was a pot of coffee & some cigars. One of the new ladies had the news put on the TV because she’s a Messianic Jew. She said everything that has been happening is straight out of the bible.

        “They’re modeling their invasion after the bible?” I asked her.

        “No, no, that’s not what I’m saying.” She answered & explained what a Messianic Jew is.

        “Why would God make his chosen people into murderers?” I asked when she was done.

        She stopped, thoughtfully, “Good question…”

        We ended up having a civil conversation about it & finally, she told me to read the book of Revelation without delay.

        After that, I carried on with my exercises. I know the answer to the question I asked. It’s in the Bhagavad Gita. The next questions are whether we accept divine answers to our mortal questions & what is best for our conscience.

        Before bed, my cellmate & I discussed the cosmos. She explained that the asteroid belt used to be a planet that got obliterated in a collision. She also agreed that we are witnessing events that have been foretold & are leading to the end times, or the end of our time, I guess.

        What we are seeing, seems to me to be a loop of what we get when we use religious texts to condone property grabs. I told my cellmate that we could be using the bible to justify taking better care of the whole planet & all of God’s creations. She agreed contemplatively.

I finally catch the first light of day. Then the lightening sky behind dark gray clouds. Already, the tiny action figures in orange vests are at work below.

“I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God’s will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard & style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed” -Maya Angelou I know Why The Caged Bird Sings

Australia failed to acknowledge its Indigenous People, so I guess Australia isn’t a country anymore. It’s hard enough to be Indigenous with recognition. I’m heartbroken for Indigenous Australians right now & I hope that they keep standing up for themselves & one another. I try to advocate for all of my people to be unified & have access to the same resources, but the opposition is relentless.

        My tribe is acknowledged, with a casino, so we can afford to do things for our people. I volunteered for our cultural committee for five years. It was just one term that seemed to go on forever because we organized it from scratch. I had almost perfect attendance & I was the secretary for most of it. I did the best work of my life & most of the other committee members resented me for it.

        At one point they tried to keep me from talking about a public Nomlaki language resource in the online California Language Archive. I could understand if they wanted to protect our cultural resources from the prying eyes of outsiders, but they wanted to keep them away from other Nomlaki people. I sent the link out in an email to the committee members & anyone else I thought would be interested.

        Two tribal members from Humboldt County retaliated against my email. One was a tribal council member & the other was a committee officer. The council member told a certain tribal member that I was sending out confidential information about them & even played a confidential recording for them. Then the committee officer sent out a reply to my email telling all the recipients not to open the link. Anyone who actually opened the link would know that it wasn’t a confidential recording.

        Neither of them told me what they were doing. The tribal member who heard the recording called me & asked me why I did that. I didn’t, I didn’t even know about that confidential recording until then, I don’t think anyone did. It was actually genius because the recording was of that tribal member & they are one of the biggest gossips in the tribe, so it could be shared with them without breaching confidentiality & they could tell everyone. I don’t know if they told anyone else, but I respect them for being upfront with me about it.

        When I show up someplace where someone has been talking about me or has checked my police history & disapproves, I get to see the shadow side of them. Being me becomes an act in defiance of their projections. I have no questions about why cases of missing & murdered Indigenous women are at crisis proportions in Humboldt County, our sisterhood is corrupted. I got away from them, but not before my family & I suffered unnecessarily. The guys just voted against me when they could.

October 15, 2023

“He’ll probably never write a good play again” -George Bernard Shaw on hearing that O’Neill had given up drinking; quoted in A. & B. Gelb, O’Neill

“Anyone can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a fine nature to sympathize with a friend’s success” -Oscar Wilde

One of the other ladies let me use their calling card to call my kid last night & we got to talk without a time limit. So, this morning I speak to my partner on the phone. I don’t have his number memorized, but I call mine & he answers. He says that he didn’t notice when I got arrested, so he didn’t know where I was & he misses me. We have a communication barrier because English is practically my only language.

        Other than my family, he is the only person who cares whether I take care of myself or not. I’m sure that helped me to stop smoking. However, I never would have met him if I hadn’t been drinking & smoking.

        I have failed to respond to questions about alcohol when asked & I have told the truth even when it disappointed someone, but I don’t lie about it. On my first day here, one of the other ladies asked me what my parents thought of me using drugs & alcohol. I told her that they didn’t really ask about it.

Without hesitation, she told me, “That’s because they know that you’re smart enough to figure it out for yourself.”

“I guess I have to,” I retorted, suddenly recognizing how much it annoyed me.

When I talked to my mom about trying to quit smoking, she told me how she quit, gradually, by creating a smaller & smaller window of time for it each day. At the same time, she acted like it was no big deal, but I was struggling.

        She & my dad were best friends after they divorced. Not right away, but eventually. They have been my best friends, but they could neglect me for work. Even into adulthood, I loved their educational talks & they always help me when I’m in crisis. They were proud of me when I excelled in sports & graduated from college, but what else is there?

        For a while, I was talking to my dad every day about not using marijuana, tobacco & alcohol, but there was no accountability. Eventually, we just stopped talking about it. I asked him to help me because he never smoked or drank & he wanted one of the values of our tribe to be sobriety. Other tribal members booed the idea with vitriol, but sobriety is a basic Native American value. We only use tobacco & psychedelics ceremonially.

There’s a stereotype that Native Americans drink too much. I think that’s due to alcohol being cast out of our communities so that when someone drinks, they become more visible to non-natives. My dad was thrilled when I could tell him that I wasn’t using alcohol or smoking, but that kind of interaction is unsustainable. Eventually, I need to figure out what I am going to do instead. His disapproval of alcohol is so extreme that he scoffs in disgust when I order a mocktail at Cattlemens Steakhouse.

He is the only one who helps me with my kid. He is the only person I trust to help me with my kid now that my mom is gone. My kid & I are the only ones whom he relies on too. It might be because he would never admit that he needs anyone’s help, but he expects our help.

Over the past ten years, I have helped three elders prepare for & experience the end of their lives. My grandma had help from her adult children & grandchildren. My great-aunt & my mom relied on me & hired caregivers. My mom also had help from friends, but great auntie outlived most of hers.

Those three women got me through the toughest time of my life: the end of my marriage. I would call the police if my ex-husband became verbally abusive because I knew it would escalate. Looking back, I think he counted on it whenever he made plans he didn’t want me to know about, he could just attack me & tell the police that I was crazy & they would take me away to the sanitarium like it was the 1800s. Eventually, he didn’t care if the police were on their way, he would hit me while we waited because he knew that they would detain me without question. He was right, they did.

        Seeing corruption in the justice system has been a huge emotional dis-stressor. I wish there were something I could do to let law enforcement know that it’s possible to follow the rules & be compassionate & when they behave unethically or with bias, they cause suffering to members of the public & themselves as well. Most of the people here in jail needed help when we were arrested.

        My arresting officers don’t believe that the system helped me. In theory, I should be rehabilitated by now. They never ask how many people & pets rely on me, but they know about all the times I was blamed for something even if I didn’t deserve it. If I didn’t get unearned income, me & all the people & pets who rely on me would be homeless from all the rehabilitation I’ve received.

        My cellmate got transferred to “the Branch” this morning before breakfast. That’s an outdoor jail facility in the southern part of Sacramento County. She ended up getting her infected teeth extracted a couple of days ago. That made her feel better & she got prescription painkillers. She didn’t want to go but she was up early mumbling to herself, so I think the fresh air will be good for her.

October 16, 2023

Most of the sky is clear, with some clouds settled on the horizon & some daylight surging out from behind them. My days here are numbered. I’m worried that I won’t have time to finish my books, the podcast, & lose 20 pounds, but I have three days.

        Twenty pages are left in my book of quotes & less than 100 in the Angelou autobiography. The Refuge Recovery podcast has helped me so much with its recollections & teachings. Mindfulness feels like a good answer to any struggle. It triggers my mind to bounce back to when I was in college discussing Buddhist teachings over black coffee in someone’s backyard.

        If I had mastered mindfulness in college, I might have missed some of the insight I’ve gained from my experiences & never met all of the ladies here. I especially appreciate the work that the “trustees” do for us. They are the ones who clean the dayroom & distribute chow & clothing. They laughed when I ask how much they get paid. They don’t earn minimum wage. The benefits are extra time outside of their cells & phone calls.

In here I exercise about two hours a day. On the outside, I probably spend that much time driving. If I quit driving, my transportation time would increase but I can use time on mass transit to read or crochet.

        Most of the time I sit on my bed in my cell. For breakfast I have some scrambled eggs, a bite of deadly-dry-potato wedges, & two milk boxes. For lunch, I eat the corners off of a sandwich. I drink the broth from the soup cup & eat the apple. For dinner, I eat veggies & any rice that doesn’t have gravy on it.

        I drink lots of water. One cup of water per hour is my goal. I’m hoping that it helps my skin, along with my citrus body splash. Clearly, I’ve lost some weight, but it seems to be around the edges because I still have a big tummy. There’s no way I haven’t lost some weight. I have nothing to do except pay attention to my diet & exercise. It’s just a matter of how many pounds.

        I don’t really want a new cellmate, but I clean my cell. On Capitol Public Radio, they report that 21 U.S. species have been added to the list of extinct species & the Amazon River is at its lowest level on record.

October 17, 2023

In between lunch & dayroom, I get a new cellmate.

        She tells me that I have to move to the top bunk. I think she is saying that she gets “bottom bunk prana,” but know that can’t be right, so I ask her to spell it. Then she starts complaining to the officers over the intercom & telling the other inmates that this isn’t going to work. One of the trustees tells her that I am “good people.” The officer on the intercom consoles her by saying that I will be leaving in two days, then the officer tells me to move my things or they will be moved for me, which would normally be a kind gesture, but the officer doesn’t mean it that way. I don’t mind moving my things, I just wanted to know what my new cellmate was saying. The intercom officer has been very unprofessional.

        My new cellmate asks, “Do we get dayroom?”

        The intercom officer, “Who’s asking?”

        Me, “Mandujano.”

        The intercom officer answers, “You get dayroom if you do what you’re supposed to. That’s how jail works,” condescendingly.

        My new cellmate, “I see, thank you.”

        Before moving to the top bunk, I clean it. There’s something that resembles mold on the vent, which explains the congestion I’ve had. There is graffiti all over the place up here, “Franklin #36,” “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is upon us,” “I don’t belong here,” “Mandatory to-do list: Read Proverbs 2 chapters, Do work out every day, Read, Pray, Read, Exercise,” & “Fly Free Baby!”

        Up here the view is different. I can see the street below & the real horizon lines up with its reflection in the rainfall windows. I can see the rooftops of smaller structures in the neighborhood.

        My new cellmate has been here for 18 months already, with six more to go. She sits with the ladies in the back of the dayroom who laugh uproariously & break rules. I sit in the front of the dayroom between the two TVs with the ladies who are uncomfortable to be here & seem too polite to have broken the law on purpose.

In the cell she’s quiet. She gives me a hair tie & asks me to braid her hair. I haven’t braided anyone else’s hair in a long time, since my kid was a toddler. While I braid, we talk about our kids & our charges.

        She has a shoulder injury that she’s supposed to get surgery on soon & that’s why she gets bottom bunk chron. We don’t know what “chron” stands for. She’s here for grand theft auto. She doesn’t drink alcohol, her drug of choice is meth. When I tell her that I’m here because I was fighting with my partner & he didn’t even notice, she laughs. I guess we’ve all done that.

        At some point we hear discord, “Get on the ground!” shouted by officers.

        My cellmate goes to the door to see what it is, “There’s a fight in 300 block.”

        I don’t want to get down from the top bunk, so I let her report the events to me.

        “They’ve got 10 cops over there…Why don’t they go in?… Now they’re coming out voluntarily…they’re getting arrested…something’s weird…they’re cops dressed in our clothes!… I knew there was something weird about that…Banks is wearing underwear on his head.” She looks back at me with wide eyes, “They were pretending to be us.”

October, 18, 2023

My cellmate was sick all night. She says it’s because she quit taking Suboxone cold turkey. The cell stinks worse than my last cellmate’s tooth infection. This cell reminds me of an assisted living facility.

        One more day before my release. I have 18 pages left of Angelou’s autobiography & I don’t know why it has its title… I’ve finished the book, & still don’t. It’s beautifully written. At times I have forced myself to keep reading because it’s a classic with historical markers like Oklahoma’s land greed & the removal of the Nisei from their San Francisco real estate which allowed African Americans to buy property there.

        Two nights ago, I watched the entire sunset from the Western facing window in the dayroom. From fairytale clouds to fire-over-the-coast-ranges orange. I watched the buildings disappear into darkness until I could see the sharp neon lights of the Ferris wheel on the Riverfront in Old Sacramento.

        From the top bunk I can’t see the top of the high rises anymore. I have given that up for a view of the light rail tracks that travel to & from the Amtrak station along H Street. When I’m released, I’ll have to walk 10 blocks to my apartment. I’m closer to home than I was when I was arrested.

        I know that I have post-traumatic stress disorder from all my arrests, but what is happening in Gaza is worse beyond compare. In 2021, a study found that 91% of children in Gaza suffer from PTSD, according to Maha Nassar of the University of Arizona’s School of Middle Eastern & North African Studies.

        Suffering trauma caused by other people can make one feel helpless, as though those people feel that your experience on Earth doesn’t matter as much as theirs, or someone else’s. You must remember that nothing can invalidate your existence, but some things will change you.

The Great Central Valley of California was an underwater home to ocean dinosaurs & pre-historic water creatures until about 700,000 years ago. The traditional creation stories of my people are about the emergence & expansion of dry land from the mud under the water that covered Earth. We have been here since then.

Institutionalized religion was used as an excuse to steal California. The Spanish claimed it, then Mexico emerged & took it over from Spain. In 27 years, Mexico gave away millions of acres of land in California to Mexican nationals, including John Sutter & then ceded it all to the United States. My people were considered landless. We were hunted & enslaved. The state of California paid money to Americans in exchange for our scalps. There were different prices for men’s, women’s, & children’s scalps.

        All of that changed our culture. It made us fearful & more familiar with brutality & disrespect than anyone should be. The way people are treated can change culture in a matter of decades. The way we treat each other is more important than land. If we are treating each other well, that means not using property ownership against one another. If human voracity for property had not reached such oppressive proportions, we could have been living in an Earth paradise this whole time. I can’t understand how anyone can hate other people to death & then think themselves superior. It gives me anxiety.

When one feels disempowered to improve one’s own situation or someone else’s, they may try to regain their power through dissent, or indifference. I hope because of a story I heard in college. It was about a town called Lu, where Confucius oversaw criminality & within a certain amount of time the town was virtually crime-free. Imagine if every law enforcement & corrections officer believed that they are changing our culture.

        I always seem to be riding the crest of a wave of much-needed reform. My DUI arrest was just a couple of months before the California Highway Patrol vehicles got much needed cameras. While I was being arrested, nothing seemed strange, but the arrest report claimed that I refused the breathalyzer after I pulled over & specifically requested it.

When the CHP troopers turned me over to the corrections officers at the jail two female corrections officers were torturing incoming inmates. We could hear screams but didn’t think much of it because sometimes there are screams in jail.

When the female officers walked me from the waiting room to the holding cell, one of them applied way too much pressure to the arm she was holding &  the other one gave me a severe rug burn on the arm she was holding. It was so bad that just a few hours later when I was released, there were big blotchy bruises on the pressed arm & little stratified speckled bruises on the rug-burnt arm.

If I don’t start drinking again when I get out, the interlock device on my car won’t be as interesting. Sacramento County requires people who have been convicted of a DUI to get an interlock device installed on any car that we drive or have registered in our name. I love my device. I request & read the logs after all my services. It surprises me that they aren’t sent out automatically.

        The device will allow my car to start if I have an alcohol test value of zero to .o3%. In my alcohol education classes, I learned about how you can still have alcohol in your system the morning after a night of drinking, but I haven’t had that problem. A couple of times I was called to do something unexpectedly after I already had a drink or two & I was surprised to find out that I was still under .03%, & how quickly my test values dropped in an hour or even half an hour.

        Every bar & liquor store in Sacramento should have an official breathalyzer, not just a quarter-machine breathalyzer. It is so educational to learn what a .05% blood alcohol value feels like instead of just guessing. Most people arrested for driving under the influence probably never take a breathalyzer until that very moment.

        When I get out, I’m going to focus on myself, just for one day. I’m not calling my phone or running to do all the chores that I know need to be done, for at least one day. I’ve been thinking about what to get to eat the whole time I’ve been here. I’m going to nap with my cats, take a bath, & appreciate all the comforts that I’m lucky enough to have.

After that, I guess it’s back to the races, goodnight.

THE END                                      

AFTERWARD

The Sacramento District Attorney wanted to convict me without reviewing the evidence. When they produced the body camera footage & it showed two officers talking in code about responding to a mentally ill person, drunk & disorderly, & then overtaking me by surprise while I’m standing on the sidewalk drinking a coffee.

There is no quantifiable evidence of any alcohol in my blood, but the district attorney wants me to go to Alcoholics Anonymous & serve 45 days in jail. It reminds me of what happened in Coconino County because they want me to be punished for the weakest part of their case & I fear that tactic will lead law enforcement to misinterpret my cooperation in the future.

The public defender tried to negotiate Refuge Recovery meetings for me, but I guess the public defender is Christian because they’ll only accept AA. I’ll get 180 days if I lose at trial. Stopping traffic is an infraction & I tell people that I got arrested for jaywalking. I found out that I didn’t make anyone late for anything. The Amtrak trains leave at 8:55 a.m., & court starts at 8:30 a.m..

           The light rail operators never reported the incident & the train camera footage was not available by the time I requested it. I was counting on that to prove that I was in the crosswalk to begin with.

I wrote a strongly worded letter to the Regional Transit administration about how they should preserve footage when there is police activity on any of their lines because it could become important evidence. They denied my claim.

           The day I was released I walked out of jail with nothing but my brown paper bag & right into the federal courthouse on the next block to file a civil lawsuit against the Sacramento Police Department for traumatizing me, because I’m tired of putting up with this. When I asked how to file the lawsuit, a clerk told me that I could find the paperwork in a drawer to my right. Then I went OUT for a coffee & a salad.

           Here’s what I wish had happened the morning I got arrested…

           Me, standing in the crosswalk that I entered while my light was green. My light turns red & the light rail operators start to honk. I nervously look toward the store hoping that my partner will come out & give my phone back. He does.

           we’re doing fine now. My partner had my phone with him when I went to see him at work. He gave it back immediately. He simultaneously wishes, to blame me for what happened, & for the district attorney to drop the charge.

I was sad to learn that Luna’s café & juice bar on 16^th Street closed a few years ago, but there’s a new business there & they’ve kept up the Thursday poetry night.

My partner & I want to start a business together. He has convenience store experience & wants to open a tea shop to make money & create jobs. As part of my jail reform, I want to open a business that serves the local community & provides high-quality products because if there can be evil corporations, there can be benevolent businesses. venmo contributions are appreciated & not tax deductible: @Slug’uh