Third Place: Star Seed Lion Cats

The highway signs warned, do not pick up hitchhikers.  A few miles further down the road was a large sign, Iowa Correctional Institution for Women.  I was fascinated by those road signs as a child, they promised an ominous darkness we would only avoid if we did as we were told, allowing no strangers into our car.

The signs weren’t as prominent along the two-lane highway I drove years later.  The trip that was a mere twenty minutes on the interstate took me forty minutes, each way, as I refused to drive on the interstate, rejecting any route that would require me to merge.  It was a peaceful drive, I’d listen to Moth Radio Hour on the local NPR station, collecting stories to share with my daughter.  Some days my leg would begin to quiver as I worked to maintain a steady speed on the gas pedal.  I didn’t know how to use the cruise control, not needed for my normal short journeys on side streets.

I now knew the signs were misleading, perhaps useful in rare instances, but it would have been more accurate had they stated hitchhikers might present a danger to you, but more likely they present a danger to themselves.  Iowa Correctional Institution for Women, 3 miles. 

My daughter Nel was in prison, on drug-related charges and in Iowa, there is only one woman’s prison.  Everyone was housed there: drunk drivers, those with drug charges, those serving life for murders of various shapes and sizes.

This was Nel’s first stay there, although she’d return, even as she’d sworn never again.  She would mock those who were released only to return within weeks or sometimes days.  How embarrassing, she would say, and they wave and draw attention to themselves.  It reminded me of her thoughts on the weekly “Winner’s Circle” meetings she would sometimes attend, where everyone was called upon to share why they were a winner that day.

“What did you say, when it was your turn?”

“I didn’t say anything, I’m in prison, we’re all in prison, there are no winners.”

Winner or not, after several months she was up for review to move to the “live out” section of the prison.  Still incarcerated, but outside the wired fencing and a fresh set of 25 cent an hour jobs available.  She spoke of jobs at the prison industry showroom, where various items manufactured by the inmates were available for purchase by local businesses.

“I don’t know if I’d want to work there though, what if it’s junk, I don’t want to be associated with selling junk.  Hey, did I tell you what happened this week?  They make balloons, Mylar balloons, I don’t know why we make balloons, but the hot glue gun machine exploded, and this girl’s pants were burned to her butt.  She had to go to the hospital; I thought maybe you saw it on the news.  Anyway, there’s a job you can get folding the balloons, what is that I wonder, folding balloons?”

I shrugged, not knowing much about balloon folding and preferring not to think about any jobs available in the live-out area.  I liked her inside, behind the razor wire, unable to walk away as she had a habit of doing.

A danger to nobody except herself.  And maybe me, she was a danger to me.  Leaving me unable to breathe, to sleep, jumping each time my phone rang, anticipating the call telling me she’d overdosed, not revived this time, but gone.

She did get moved to the live-out side and got a job on the ground crew.  I laughed, picturing her doing that job, we’d never even had her mow the lawn at home.  She’d have been better suited to folding balloons.

There was an incredible amount of snow in Iowa that winter which Nel was tasked with shoveling, sprinkling sand across the walkways to provide some grip as things melted and refroze, slippery patches everywhere to navigate around that bitterly cold year.

“Did I tell you what happened when I had to get more sand yesterday,” she asked.

“Nope,” I said, likely doing something else while half-listening to her.  People in prison have a lot of empty hours on their hands, time to call people multiple times a day even if they have nothing meaningful to say.

“I call the maintenance building Afghanistan because it has a big box full of sand.  Mae calls it the cat box.  I saw something orange and thought someone lost a cool glove and when I grabbed it, it was cat poop, but with a leaf stuck to it.  That’s why it looked orange!”

Often, I’d make sounds that were the equivalent of a head nod, so many calls I fielded from her daily.  On the way to work, while sitting at an airport bar, standing in my kitchen making dinner, entertaining her nonsensical updates as I knew they mattered to her.  Something she looked forward to, a way to pass the hours of nothingness.

When not shoveling snow or gathering supplies from the cat box, Nel and Mae sometimes snuck over to a nearby creek, searching for a mountain lion that was rumored to frequent the area.

“We’re pretty sure we found some deer poop and lion-cat poop!” Nel reported during another call.

“I highly doubt there’s a mountain lion and if there is, it’s probably a bad idea that you’re messing around over there, and why do you keep referring to it as a lion-cat?”

“I’m not worried, it would recognize me as one of its own, a lion-cat.”

Christ, a lion-cat.

It was another inmate, RuthAnn, who had convinced Nel to seek out the ground crew job.

RuthAnn was straddling an odd scenario in which she was housed on the inside, behind the razor wire, but allowed to work on the outside.  The prison had outfitted her with an ankle monitor because they’d never done this before.  There was too much risk in moving the inmates back and forth, contraband could be smuggled in, there was a greater chance they’d attempt an escape.

RuthAnn was serving life without parole and had been incarcerated at this same facility since she was seventeen years old.  She’d been there nearly thirty years.  Anyone unfamiliar who saw her maneuvering about, interacting with the guards, could have easily mistaken her for someone of authority.  The warden perhaps.

She’d murdered an elderly woman who’d let her in her house to use her phone.  The woman served her a glass of orange juice, after which RuthAnn stabbed her twenty-three times and then stole her credit cards and car.  Even though only fifteen at the time, she’d been charged as an adult, thus the life sentence.

There had come a Supreme Court ruling though, that life without the possibility of parole was cruel and inhumane punishment for a minor.  Her life sentence wasn’t vacated, but she had to be allowed the possibility of parole.  Thus, the attempts at rehabilitation, the exception allowing her to work on the outside while still being incarcerated on the inside.

I knew RuthAnn from the prison visiting room.  I don’t think she had any visitors herself, she was in there working, taking photos of the other inmates with their families during visits or serving up food during the prison’s frequent “theme” weekends. 

She asked me once where I got my cute shoes.  I felt awkward as she stared at me blankly while I rattled through a list of places where I might have ordered my shoes online.  I quickly rejoined my daughter at our table.

“RuthAnn doesn’t know about any of those things,” Nel chastised me, “she doesn’t know how to use a cell phone, she doesn’t know about shopping online.”

I visited my daughter every weekend.  There was a set routine on the inside.  Once she was moved to the live-out area of the prison, everything changed.  They had a separate visitor room which wasn’t as nice, clearly built with a short-term experience in mind.

On the inside, some of the women were having visits with their families in the only setting they would ever see them in for the rest of their lives.  Efforts were made to create a festive atmosphere.  The guards were friendly and there were superhero or unicorn days.  Sometimes the rescue dogs who were being cared for by the inmates would come trotting in, sporting little capes or hats to match whatever made-up holiday was being celebrated.

We were in the ugly live-out visiting room one day when my daughter slid a tightly folded piece of paper towards me.  I both wanted and did not want to know where she’d pulled it from.  She was subject to a search on her way in and out, and nothing was to change hands during visits.

“Take it,” she urged me.

I clutched it in my hand as I tried to figure out where to put it.  I too wasn’t to have anything in my pockets. 

“What is this,” I hissed.

“It’s a list of what I need you to buy and throw in the ditch,” she said, “the ditch at the street that borders the corn field.”

This is what happens with the live-out side of the prison, with those on the ground crew.  They have a bit of freedom, they don’t just tend to the prison grounds, they have a perimeter that they cover, cleaning up trash in the ditches that stretch beyond the prison.  She had given me a shopping list, things to buy on my way out of town and fling from the car window as I’m flying down the road, for them to retrieve later.

Since I refused to look at the list as we were sitting there, she detailed out for me what I was to buy.  Cigarettes, body spray and donuts were requested. Not just any donuts but jelly donuts.  I was mad.  Mad that she wanted me to do this and mad that her list required I stop at two places.  One for jelly donuts and another for body spray.  Granted both places were right next to each other - even shared a parking lot - but it felt like an inconvenient ask.  After a visit, I was focused on getting home.  Home to my weekend cocktails that were disrupted by these weekly visits to the prison.

“Do you need jelly donuts? Really!?”

“RuthAnn likes jelly donuts,” she said.

“Is your life in danger?”  I was joking when I asked. 

Nel smacked her hand down on the table and said, “listen, JUST GET THE JELLY DONUTS.”

RuthAnn was a good friend to my daughter and shared my fears regarding her well-being.  She would often approach me during visits and whisper her worries about Nel’s ability to stay clean if she was released.  I tell her all the time, she can’t mess with that stuff, it’s gonna kill her.  Sometimes she’d gently place a hand on my shoulder, shaking her head saying, I don’t know what we’re gonna do about that girl.

I’d nod in agreement, shaking my head at the impossibility of it all.  The impossibility of changing Nel.  The impossibility of my life, finding myself brainstorming ideas with a convicted murderer in hopes of saving my daughter. 

So, I wasn’t worried about RuthAnn, I was simply hoping to steer the conversation elsewhere as I was undecided about whether I would accommodate Nel’s shopping request.

“See any good penis art lately,” I asked in a further attempt to stall.

A few weeks before, Nel had been very animated while sharing a tale of two younger boys waiting for the school bus who had apparently drawn a large dick on the street.  Nel had seen this as she was out picking up trash.  She seemed most amused by the boys’ efforts to act innocent, as they tried to casually shift their feet to cover the piece of chalk that gave them away as the culprits.

I really had no interest in the dick drawing but had asked her to demonstrate with her arms how big the picture was.  Sometimes any topic will do to fill the time during a prison visit.

We might have had more to talk about had she not called me multiple times a day.  Emailing me through the prison messaging system when not calling, often odd things like I want to learn to play the guitar as well as Ricky Skaggs or reminding me to look up megalodons because she needed to know if when she’d read they had been “as large as a house” that meant a normal-sized house or something grander.

It was my fault that she was able to call so often, and email.  I was generous with my funding.  I yelled at her often, empty threats of calling it quits and walking away, leaving her on her own, no more fancy rehab centers or funds on her commissary account in jail and prison if she kept this shit up.  But I did all that via calls and emails, not during our in-person visits.  She had no qualms about causing a scene; I did.  So, we spoke of dick graffiti and jelly donuts in person rather than my fear and anger at the likelihood of her all but certain death if she continued on her current trajectory.   

“No, it’s huge, I can’t even show you with my arms,” she marveled.  “Drive down Space Avenue to see it when you leave.  It’s a dick AND balls; you can’t miss it.”

Nel loved that there was a street in town named Space Avenue.  She said she’d like to live on a street by that name someday, she thought it would be fitting since she considered herself not of this world, believing herself to be a star seed.  She was a star seed lion-cat.

My attempt at changing the subject didn’t work and Nel could focus on nothing else until I answered her about the shopping list.  I’ll see, I said.  Finally, saying yes, I would buy the stuff, just to shut her up.

I bought some of the things on the list.  I pulled off the highway onto the gravel road, inching my car as close as possible to the designated ditch.  Flinging donut bags and other contraband items out my window, dipping my toe in crime.  Not just that time, but every week that followed.

I still have a couple of the shopping lists my daughter gave me.  I kept everything from her, had been doing so for a long time.  Saving these tiny mementos to have in the event I had to face this world without her.

I suspect Nel and Mae and RuthAnn’s imaginations were running wild as they drafted the lists each week. What new items could they add, seeing how much I would bend to their will and buy an ever-increasing list of nonsensical items: cigarettes, donuts (cream or jelly filled), energy drinks, crosswords, nail polish remover, money, hand sanitizer, hair ties, body spray, lip balm, liquid eyeliner, sparkly eyeshadow, and gum.

I sometimes incorporated little surprises such as expensive cream-filled chocolates at Christmas, carefully tucking the candy shop sack into another bag, hoping to protect it from the elements and hungry wild animals.

Why did I participate in their rule-breaking, once again enabling Nel?  I didn’t deeply ponder my motives, because I didn’t question them.  I wanted her to stay.  I wanted her to have these small, foolish pleasures if it meant she would have less reason to run.  At one time I wanted her to thrive and blossom but now I was only hoping to keep her alive.

I don’t know if any of this played a role, but she didn’t walk out.  She stayed until she was approved for parole only to return not once, but twice.  She never ended up on the “live out” side again, never had the rush of seeing what unknown goodies might be waiting for her in the ditch each week.

RuthAnna Banana, as Nel liked to call her, did get out on parole and struggled, as Nel suspected she would.  Her friend Mae was released and moved somewhere south.

I’d driven down Space Avenue that day, searching for the giant dick in the road.  I was a bit disappointed to find that it was gone.  Perhaps erased by rain or by parents who didn’t find their sons’ artwork nearly as impressive as Nel had.

Nel kept looking but never saw a lion-cat.  I no longer have anything to look for but still catch occasional glimpses of Nel out of the corner of my eye.  Never in a crowd or standing still, I only see her in motion, reflected in solitary figures walking along the road.

She remains forever thirty while I continue to age, afraid my memories will begin to blur and fade.  My crisp visions of her face, her eyes, her smile will slowly be erased, impermanent as chalk, leaving just distant smears of a magical star seed sitting right outside my line of sight. 

-Kim McVicker

Kim McVicker is a life-long resident of Iowa but has no cows, chickens nor any farming experience. She worked for decades in the financial services industry, which is as dull as it sounds. Mother of one, now gone, she finds solace in writing about her experiences with her daughter, even the ugly memories. When not reading, writing, or listening to NPR, she enjoys letting her granddaughters squish mud, fingerpaint and otherwise make whatever messes bring them joy. Her work has been published in HerStry, Pithead Chapel, BackChannels and Anti-Heroin Chic. She lives in Des Moines, IA with her delightful, patient and mess-hating husband David.