Note from Dustin: I am sending you an essay for your blog. Maybe someone will find themselves in this story and speak up.

Note from Prison Culture: I met Dustin in a class that I taught at Stateville Prison a couple of weeks ago. I received a letter from him a few days ago that included his essay “Either/Or.” I am happy to publish it here. If anyone would like to write to Dustin about his story. He can be reached at:
Dustin Sherwood Clay
R23623
Stateville Prison
P.O. Box 112
Joliet, IL 60434

You can also leave your comments below and I will make sure that they get to Dustin.

EITHER/OR by Dustin Sherwood Clay

There was a creek on my block in Bellwood that snaked under the street and exposed itself where lots for homes should have been. It is full two stories down to water level. It’s gated but gates are little hindrance to the thought of adventure. In the daytime the creek held mystery. Both slopes were steep and filled with brush, like most scenes in Jason movies. The thought of white water rafting under streets on the gentle currents of a slow moving creek seemed more exciting than being tall enough for the big boy roller coasters at Six Flags.

David got his hands on a blue hard plastic raft with two yellow hard plastic ores. The mission (and we chose to accept it) was to make sure no parent could see us sneak the raft up and over the gate and ease it down the slope to navigate the great unknown. We were pretty sure the raft was made for one but me, David and my brother was kids. Surely together we couldn’t exceed the weight of an adult. David hid the raft in his garage. My brother and I put ourselves in charge of the ores. We hid them in our living room behind our Dad’s chair. Hiding it in plain sight was not the plan, we actually thought they were hidden.

It was still a few days until the weekend. We agreed we needed a full day to explore the water. Christopher Columbus on the deck of the Santa Maria had to feel like a man with vision. There’s nothing like it, vision makes you find a way out of no way. I can’t even swim but dreams of the water felt like a great escape.

Me and my brother slept upstairs in a split level house next to our baby sister’s room. Our parents took over the guest room downstairs. Sometimes they would fight. Once the police were called. In ’83 domestic violence calls were the shortest investigation ever. If the woman pressed charges the man would be home in an hour minus 50 bucks with that being cause for another ass whoppin. If threat of arrest was realized, but all together avoided, it had a calming effect on the situation. Most times my brother and I didn’t leave our room. But the tones of hostility captured our attention like lassos in Dad’s old westerns. When that hostility flows out of the mouths that speak love to us, my heart drops.

One night we heard the boom of our Mother being knocked up against a wall. This fight was different. The tussling sounded desperate. I followed my brother’s lead. He flew out the bed, down the stairs with me and our baby sister in tow. My father was hunched over our Mother who was crouched down up against the dresser by the door of their bedroom. Dad’s eyes were intense and bloodshot, nose flaring, jaw clenched. His arms seemed even more massive, up in the air ready to strike again with the yellow hard plastic ore in his hands. I froze. I heard my brother screaming for my Dad to stop, my little sister screamed. I said NOTHING.

I can count on one hand how many times I heard my Mother use bad words in my whole life, this day being the first. At that moment she told my father, “You was out getting pussy.” That threw me. My Dad was slapped with rage, swinging the ore as if trying to erase those words from her lips. Mom used her full strength to block each blow while sobbing. A heavy humming sob that seemed to come more through her, than from her, from another dimension. My memory shuts off here like broken film in a projector. Write, missing reel here.

The next day Mom and Dad went to work. The undercurrent of strife in our house was something we lived with like a moon pet. When Dad came home he found his chair and no one said a word to him. One of the ores still laid behind that chair.

A rolling wave of conversations wets my ears and palms as I descended the stairs to the visiting room. I’m determined to try once more to ask what all those fights were about. The passing of 25 years haven’t softened the blows of that night nor the confusion and disbelief weighing on my childhood. Mom sits across from me on a rare occasion without my father, looking worn out by the subject.

Back in my cell I still reel from Mom’s telling of her perspective with no answer to my question, just her keenly perceptive observation of one moment out of the whole event. Mom crouched down by the dresser, with her hands in a defensive position feeling our eyes grabbing for her, all pleading helplessly for Mommy, Mom, and Moma. Mom’s eyes find mine. I’m expressionless. My little shoulders are slumped. When I said proudly, “My Dad could whoop your Dad,” it was taken as a statement of fact by every kid on my block and the next over. Now he was at war. I didn’t possess any weapons to make him retreat.

Mom read conviction in my eyes of her. She believed me to be siding with my father. Blinders blocked my fear from her vision. She had no idea of the blame I felt for badly wanting to sleep with that ore under our roof. I kicked that dream of rafting out of my head with such finality it was as if that dream never rocked this dreamer to sleep. Someone’s truth can be constructed on a mystery that badly needs solving or else their truth will constantly lie to them. Mom silenced me and my clarifying sentiments. I still don’t know what all the fights were about. The older generations don’t remember the past like we do. They don’t talk about it for the same reason they don’t remember it. Blame is rarely black and white. It’s easier to create a villain than to self-examine your twist in a villainous plot. They don’t wanna see the whole truth. Just highlights and fast forwards, either/or. They teach us how to hide everything we are by not showing us how they got from A to B. Then they wonder why we can’t seem to make it to C.