You know, that’s what my sockeyetrist told me. “Catherine,” he said, “you’ve got a person in you, another person besides you, and that person is all the time telling you, ‘Catherine, you’re no good, Catherine, you can’t do thus and that.’ And you are trying to become yourself, but that other person is afraid that if you do, then she’ll be dead. You’re trying to kill that other person, and she don’t like it.”
Well, I certainly wouldn’t either like it, but if there is somebody in there, I wish she would open her trap sometime and give me some help. Seems like she doesn’t have any better sense than I do.
Because Jeez Chrise, seems like I was born in muddy water and have been walking deeper into quicksand ever time I try to take a step towards dry land ever since. Marry Charles, and what does he turn out to be, nothing but a criminal, walks off with me carrying Grady, and next thing I know he’s in the pin up in Soledad, and his brother Tom Linares moving in to take care of me with all his criminal friends.
They took care of me, all right. First thing they did to take care of me was, they took me out to the movies one night. Out to the drive-in, only it wasn’t to any drive-in. Now, if that other person is in there in my head, strikes me she would’ve maybe wondered why those guys were having me to drive their car to this “drive-in.” But not her. She never says a mubbling word unless I’m trying to fix to do something that might do me some good in this world.
Like, when I was car-hoppin, and I’d bring home twenty, thirty dollars on a good night – most money I ever made, and I was only thirteen then – and Ma would just hold out her hand, flopped out there on the sofa, and take all but a dollar. And I knew what didn’t go for her bottle was going to my brother Jack, who hasn’t worked a day in his life yet, I expect, and wadn’t expected to do anything to help out around the house, or be good at school, or do anything but just be Jack.
But me, I was car-hoppin, and cookin, and clean, and all the teachers at school making fun of me, and them that didn’t ignorin me, like there was just a hold in space where my desk was – I was suppose to do everything, and when my report card would come, Ma would scream at me, and Jack make fun of me. All the time that other person in my head did not say, “Hey, that is wrong for her to be taking all of that money which you earned.” Nope. Not a word from her then. I just thought, “Oh, well, that’s how it goes.”
Didn’t say nothing this time, either, though it wasn’t to any movie we were going, but to the county jail. One of Tom’s buddies was in there suspect of grand larceny for stealing a car only he didn’t, cording to him. And before I know it, I am driving this car full of escaped suspects from the county jail to Kingman, Arizona, which is where we stopped to get some dinner at Burger Chef, and all of a sudden wadn’t nothing but flashin red lights outside every window and they put me on a year’s probation.
My probation officer says to me, “Catherine, keep your nose clean.” Well, that’s fine, but how are you going to keep your nose clean when it’s cuttin your way through the dirt? Wasn’t supposed to consport with no known criminals, he said.
“That’s great,” I told him, “I’m livin in a house with Tom Linares, which he is already a known criminal. and which is paid for by Tom Linares, and which is the only roof over my head, and Grady’s head, and which I can’t pay for no other roof on account of I’ve been in the booby hatch twice and now on a year’s probation.”
“Well, what skills do you have?” he asks me. Bein a nut and consportin with criminals, what I felt like sayin to him and his neat little shirt and his glasses, those kind that are kind of pinky-gray and make a person’s eyes look all sick and diseased like a rabbit.
“I can fix things,” what I did tell him. “I use to tear down clocks and lay the pieces all out to see how they fit back together.”
“Broken clocks, you mean,” he says, sort of laughing.
“Naw. They was all right. I just wanted to see could I make them run,” I said.
“Well, keep your nose clean,” he says.
So Tom was put up in the pin alongside Charles, and that was when I met Larry Grimes and all that bunch. Now he was going to take care of me. Some of Tom’s friends, Susie Gearhart and Luther, that was Tom and Charles’s cousin, was still hanging around, but they didn’t hit it off too good with Larry Grimes, so they went off to the old farm out there that hadn’t nobody turned the ground since Luther’s daddy got a stroke and they send him to the veteran’s hospital.
Larry Grimes was a pretty nice guy, even if he was just another criminal, a dealer, but he treated me and Grady all right. Used to take us into L.A. for dinner when he was between deals. One time he took us to Chinatown, to one of those tempooroo bars, place where you sit and watch them cook up all these little things that you never heard of half of them. The cooks, they stand right in front of you and plop those things into a pot of oil, must be hot, I’m telling you, cause as soon as they plop it in, zwoop, up it comes on your plate. They had squid in there. I wasn’t going to eat any, but Larry made me take a bite. Didn’t taste bad, but I told him it was kind of like tryin to chew through a hank of old rubber, and he laughed.
Well, things were going along pretty well, for me, and Larry was off on one of his trips down to Mexico or wherever he went to. “You don’t want to know,” he told me, and I didn’t. Messing around with those drugs and things was what drove me crazy one time, the second time, and I didn’t want anything more to do with no more drugs, let alone no drug deals.
I was just cleanin out the sink after supper when I hear this horrible noise, whunk.
“Somethin’s happen to Grady,” I said, and went runnin around the counter, and there was Grady out cold with his head on the TV stand, and at first I thought it was the light from the TV makin his face all blue, but he was just all blue and couldn’t get a squeak out of him.
All of Larry Grimes’ bunch was either off with him or just off. The only person I knew with a car – well, about the only person I knew, period – was Luther and them. So I called out there to the farm, and lucky Susie Gearhart was there and had the keys to a car and came in and got me and Grady to the mergency room on time.
I was waiting for the doctor to come out and giving my life history to the fat nurse the way you always have to, and Susie Gearhart says in my ear, “I’m going back to your place. Call me when you’re ready to come home.”
It was kind of funny, but I didn’t think about it at the time, with worrying about Grady and trying to answer all these questions the fat nurse was asking me. Then I set and tried to look at a magazine, but mostly I though about Grady and looked at the other people waitin to be let in or for someone to be let out, or pass on, or whatever.
“A mild sub-something incidens,” was what the doctor told me. He said it wadn’t anything to worry about. I suppose he wouldn’t worry if his kid started turnin all blue. But Grady looked to be normal again. He was real tired and cranky, but that was to be expected. So Susie Gearhart came down and got us.
On the way home, I got time to wonder why she didn’t want to wait with me, and I asked her.
“Oh, this car is hot,” she said, and laughed.
Oh, wunnerful, I thought, now next thing is to get arrested in a stolen vehicle. But we made it home and Susie Gearhart went back out to the farm, so I said, “Whew, squeaked by that one, anyway.”
But no. Because it wadn’t but three days before Luther and Susie and that whole bunch was busted, and all they had on Susie was my testimony about the stolen car, about her telling me it was stolen.
And how did they know about that? Smart little Catherine, tryin to keep her nose clean, she had told her probation officer about it, is how.
“Would you be willing to bring this evidence before a grand jury?” he asks.
“Course not,” I said. “Those are some bad people.”
He just nodded. I should of known. Just sat there and nodded, with the light from the fixture bouncing off his glasses.
Three days after that, I open the door and there’s two cops come with a warrant to take me down to the D.A.’s office.
“What about Grady?” I said. “Isn’t anyone to stay with him.” So they let me bring Grady along.
The man in the D.A.’s office, Chuck Florsheim, he’s real nice to me at first. Sits me down, gets one of the seccateries to take Grady over to the playroom in the welfare office.
“Now frankly, Catherine,” he starts in, and then a whole lot of mungo-jungo, but the short of it is pretty much that unless I testify about that Susie Gearhart told me she was driving a stolen car, they’re going to pull me off probation and put me in the women’s pin for helping a jail escape. I was all they had to put anything on Susie Gearhart, and they wanted to put that whole bunch away pretty bad.
So I get home from that, and the telephone rings. I answer. There is this real quiet voice on the other end.
“You even look like you’re going to say one word, when they call you on the stand, and Charles won’t live twenty-four hours. And you and your kid won’t live longer.” Click.
They aren’t kidding. Luther and them are some bad people, and they have a lot of friends up there in Soledad, like that Black Mike.
So there I am. Larry Grimes and them I know are going to stay clear far away. I don’t know how I’m going to feed Grady. If I don’t testify, I’ll go to jail, and where will Grady go? If I do testify, they’ll kill Charles up there, and maybe come after Grady and me.
“We’ll protect you,” Chuck Florsheim said. Uh-huh. “Intimidating witnesses is a felony.”
“Well Jeez Chrise, what do you think these people are but a bunch of felonies?”
“Don’t worry,” he said.
Put you in quicksand up to the armpits, I’d like to see you say “Don’t worry” then.
Well, if I get out of this one, I don’t know how. Can’t run. Nothin to run with, nowhere to run to, and they’re prolly watchin the house. But if I do get out of this one, I know one thing. That other person in there, she can tell me “No” or “Whatever” all she wants to, but she’s got to go. She just isn’t any help at all. If I get out of this, then some way or other I’m gonna take Grady and get us out of this place and back to Texas. At least there, they just thought I was a nut.
Gonna change my name, too. Catherine, I reckon that must be that other person the sockeyetrist was talkin about. Catherine must be her name. I’m going to change my name and go by my middle one, Blizbeth. It was supposed to be Elizabeth, but my daddy’s handwriting was so bad, they put it down on my birth paper “Blizbeth.”
They used to make fun of that, too. But I don’t care. I like it. It’s different.
(originally published in Rocky Mountain Arsenal of the Arts, IV:5, September-October 1990)
