'being Sian' - The Prison Visit

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‘Being Sian’ The Prison Visit Today I decided to visit James in prison. I’d spent the last few months hating his guts, for the long cold silences and intolerance towards me, but now I had to stop punishing him. I hadn’t written to him, sent him money or visited once since he’d been arrested, but now I’ve gone too far. Today I got a letter from him that scared the shit out of me, basically saying I was dumped. He felt I didn’t want to know him anymore, because of my lack of communication. I’d played my game with him, by sulking to make him see the error of his ways, and now he thought I was dumping him, when I wasn’t! Maybe it’s too late, and he’s finished with me? I hovered outside Wandsworth prison, spending the past twenty minutes walking up and down the main road outside to pass away the time. I was too early for the visit at two o clock. The area was unfamiliar and it felt surreal, but at least it was an adventure, a change of scene. Sad as I was to admit it, I didn’t get out much. I hadn’t done so for five years, living only in the confines of Hackney and our miserable flat. The last time I had a day trip out was at the beginning of the relationship, and that was to Southend. James made that a living hell, smashing his fist onto the coach seat in front, as he swore about how long the journey was. Now I walked across the forecourt, nervous because the security guard in the office box was staring at me as if I wasn’t meant to be there. Already I felt like a criminal, guilty as if I was doing something wrong. Being scrutinized made me self conscious, and my body language changed, like I has something to hide. I felt I didn’t stand a chance, and that I’d get

3 shouted at by one of them. I had to go into a small hut-like room on the forecourt, to put my things into a locker. There was an older blonde woman there, sitting at a café table. I wasn’t allowed anything except my I.D, she told me. I asked her what the process was, and how to operate the damn lockers, what change did they take? I didn’t have it anyway, and when I asked the café for the right coins, they refused, the unhelpful bastards. This was my first time, but she’d been here many times before. She had a warm Scotch accent, and we exchanged stories. I moaned about my wayward lover, and she moaned about her wayward son, whom she still held out hope for. I liked the woman. She was harmless. I felt sorry for her. “He’s not a bad boy, not a bad boy, just the drugs…” She droned, mimicking my own excuses for James, it struck me. The prison building stood outside the café hut, formidably grey and scary compared to the warm cosy inside of where I has just been. It was like a little haven, you could forget where you were because it felt so normal and homely, as long as you didn’t look out of the window at the Evil Place. It was a false set up, and didn’t really fool anyone, but bless them for trying. I passed through the metal detector, which was physically long, about five feet. The staff, a couple of guys and a blonde girl, were surprisingly bright and perky considering their horrible job. They worked far enough away from the real action to enjoy themselves, I suppose. They could afford to be more cheerful, but it was the annoying kind of cheeriness that police officers have when you call them out on a job where nothing’s really the matter, so they don’t have to worry, but they smile and assert their

4 authority much more gently; but still asserting it, just so you remember who they are, and they are not demeaned just because you wasted their time. I sat at a table in the Visitors Room, a huge rectangle full of men, who sat down with their heads bent towards each other, unsmiling and hard. Then I saw him. James. Being marched down with an officer each side. He was gaunt and thin, sunken in his outrageous uniform, a horrid orange nylon top and grey trousers. His face was cold, blank and barely polite, eyebrows arched like upside down v’s, raised in a questioning way to make sure I felt uncomfortable, like I had to explain myself to him. He was fantastic at making me feel nervous and awkward, without actually trying very hard. It came naturally to him, the abuser that he was. He sat opposite me and as I held his hand, it felt thin and cold. As cold as I felt inside, it would take more effort on his part to melt me, and I knew he never was a one to make an effort for anything or anyone, so I knew I was out of luck. Yet feeling him holding my hand was melting me a bit, and I could almost love his face again, kind of, almost. Was I going off him a bit? I wondered, but I’d probably be able to fancy him again at will. He was being all lovey dovey. Lots of staring into my eyes, and holding my hand, and oh, even a kiss… oops, the guards, no contact allowed! I went home feeling reassured that he hadn’t dumped me after all. Everything was fine. Except for months passing, and the guy called Troy, who slept over when we had a pillow fight, and my friends Tom and Gary, and so many different things happening, but basically me enjoying my freedom. I hadn’t bothered visiting him again, he had been transferred to another prison in Hertfordshire and I used the pretext that it was too far to travel and I couldn’t afford the fare, which was true but not a good excuse

5 not to see a man I thought I loved. What the hell, it was coming up to Christmas, and I sent him a love letter and some money and a promise to get down to see him soon, out of duty. I never did. Then I got a phone call, weeks before his release date, a sweet begging voice; “Will you marry me?” and, “Do you love me?” I would normally have glowed at hearing these things but strangely I felt angered and obstinate. “A bit.” I settled for. Now the real reason for his call. To check my mood out because of the letter he’d anxiously written a week before: ‘I can come home early on a tag but the prison needs to confirm I have a home address, if not I stay longer, and they’ll rehouse me’ He’d written. I wrote back a short polite letter stating that it might be a better idea to stay longer and get himself rehoused, as we weren’t getting on. Later when he was released, I never heard the end of it. How cruel I was to make him stay there another, very unnecessary month, ‘While you’re here, living the life of Riley’, He said in bitter rage. Who the hell was Riley? I wondered, but couldn’t be bothered to find out, since the saying came from him and I almost wasn’t interested. “Well, why didn’t you get rehoused from the prison after all?” I asked, annoyed. Some stupid senseless excuse, as usual. Something like, they couldn’t do it after all because…. he was still a joint tenant with me.

6 I always had a sneaky feeling far in the back of my mind, that I was just a convenience to James. I think he only stayed with me when we were both homeless just to get a flat, because couples are more of a housing priority than single people. When it came down to it, we were offered the flat together at the hostel we’d been staying in, and it wasn’t negotiable. We had to take it together as joint tenants. This meant that if we split up, neither party was entitled to another flat, unless there was domestic violence, the council said. Joint tenants….which meant that Social Security viewed us as ‘living together as a couple.’ So our benefits were joined together, or as reality has it, James takes as much as he can including my ‘half’ and whatever’s left isn’t mine, as it has to go on food. I’m lucky to spend twenty quid occasionally because whatever’s there never stretches to the second week, so I always have to ask my mother to give me money which I never pay back, because I can’t. James now gets to waste more money now because I get my mother’s money, which ironically is the same amount of benefit that James gets for himself, so she really finds it hard to spare it. He hates my mother, making her unwelcome in our home and ignoring her, hostile as ever, yet of course he sucks up her money like a dirty leech. When I bring home the notes I try to buy food and electricity quickly because he’ll only ask for some of it to buy speed and cannabis with. All he cares about is cannabis. He sits there like a dumb vegetable, silent, hard faced and evil, emitting weird vibes, like a withered old lizard, because although he’s only thirty he looks like a junkie with his sucked in cheeks. ‘He looks more like an evil fairy’ my mother so often said, though I hated hearing her imput, in her smug voice, ‘with his pointy chin and high broad forehead, like a big triangle.’

7 He’s incredibly underweight because he’s been using Speed, feeding his habit while I struggle by on my mother’s money. Basically, everyone asks why I am still with him, and all I can say is, I may hate his guts but surprisingly, I’m still attracted to him and adore him when he’s being reasonable, which is hardly ever, only when he’s humoring me, or just happens to be in a good mood, he makes it clear he hates my guts otherwise. More powerfully, whenever he threatens to dump me, I get so panicky it’s pathetic. I get all anxious and my heart pounds, and I make a fool of myself squeaking and pleading like a little kid wanting to go on a merry go round, please ‘Daddy.’…… ‘No, don’t dump me, I swear I’ll be good’, because somehow he makes me out to be the bad guy and I’ve offended him. When I contest that I’ve done nothing wrong, or apologized for what I have done, it’s never enough, and ‘Go away now Sian, you’re annoying me. Go into the bedroom and let me watch TV in peace’. But why should I be sent to the bedroom, ‘Daddy?’ Don’t send me to Coventry and ignore me for another three days, ‘Daddy’. It’s my house too isn’t it, I have a right to sit here in the living room with you and watch TV too… and he can’t argue this logic, he scowls at me as I sit beside him on the one couch. There’s nowhere else to sit so he can’t really argue that either, but his hatred pierces me like arrows. I’m not even last on his list, because I’m not on his list at all. Sometimes I think he must only be in it for the flat…. preferably with me out of it, leaving it entirely for him to lead his miserable little life in; like one of the gerbils we used to keep locked up in it’s tiny dirty tank. The resentment and the silence fills the whole room and makes it smaller, and crushes me beneath its weight.

8 He would love to be able to physically drag me into the bedroom and force me to remain, but I will fight and scream to the death, and run back out again, like an animal longing to be treated like a human being, and tonight he hasn’t got the energy for the battle, because he has tried it before and failed. His face had set into a mask of vicious hate, cold as ever, not even twisted with the anger, just blank as usual but deadly with the rage underneath it. He is dangerous. Don’t get me wrong, there have been times where I did stay in the bedroom when he made me. Usually I was too tired and depressed to argue and wanted to sulk, and I buried my head under the covers and cried, silently. Occasionally I grew angry that I should be hiding my tears from the one making me cry, so I deliberately let a sniffle escape loudly, my heart sinking because I felt the coldness from the next room, and knew he felt no pity, but hoping I could prove the point. “What is it, Sian?” I could never find the words to tell him why. He would only defend himself and make me the liar, but when my muffled reply came he just sighed. “I can’t help you Sian. Maybe you should see a shrink. If you’re depressed, do something about it, get a job or go to college, you know.” But I had a job. I lost it because of him. I went to College. I lost my concentration because of him. I failed at everything because my mind was caught up with him and I was so miserable, and if my mind was free my body wasn’t. I would have gone hungry that day. If I wasn’t hungry now I soon would be, and I was struggling and worrying about how we were going to scrape through this week.

9 The pattern never changed. It has been like this for years. Every week of every month was hell to survive, and who can blame me for being drained, when he was draining me? I had no control over my own mind, soul or body. He loved to possess and destroy. Of course he doesn’t love me then, if this is the case…but hang on, yesterday he told me how beautiful my eyes were and kissed me and was quite pleasant, so that can’t be true.

copyright@emmasharn2009