Mimimum Security

Sandra Cisneros tells me that when I’m one age, I’m really all the other years I’ve lived, too. When I’m 15, 14 is still penned up inside, and sometimes she comes out. But what she didn’t tell me, what I had to learn on my own, is that when I’m a certain age, I’m sometimes also all the years I haven’t lived yet, too. When I’m 20, sometimes 30’s bitterness makes an appearance, or sometimes even 40’s wrinkles or busted dreams.

I was only 15 the first time my mom went to jail, but I think 25 emerged. Mommy, when are you going to come to my house to visit me? crooned from the mouth of my two-year old sister at the end of Sunday visiting hours at the women’s facility was enough to make my mom cry and promise that this was it. No more I’m done with drugs.

She got out of jail after only nine months and earned the privilege of house arrest. I was the dorm trustee. I even helped the other women comb their hair for lice. She must have been good at it since all she had to do to finish her sentence was go to work every day and show up for pee-tests on Saturdays. And pass them.

The first two or three were O.K.—but not without some finagling. I gotta drink a gallon of water at least an hour before I test. Maybe there was a water shortage. Maybe her piss was just too intoxicating. Maybe the police showed up the next day and towed her out the door.

I can’t recall if any of us cried when the cops cracked in with a set of handcuffs and buzzed out with my mom’s dependent wrists in them.