My Name Is Not Barbie

My cellmate at the correctional center that I had been transferred to six weeks after the guilty verdict, or cellie as we called them, was trying to teach me how to survive my final transfer—prison. Lucky for me. She claimed to have spent four years there. But this time she was only going to empty instant espresso packets down her throat and pace around the tiny box with her swishing Rapunzel hair in jail instead of prison.

“If anyone asks you to do anything, just say ‘no.’ You never know what they’re really up to,” she shook her head. “You could get in trouble and your time could get extended. Don’t be afraid to say no,” she said with well-intended, caffeinated pupils. I was twenty-six-years-old and had spent my life like a timid house plant. To say I was terrified to go to prison is an understatement.

A few days later, a chippy young inmate was selected as a sort of jail hall monitor, passing inmates the phone-on-wheels when the daily half an hour came available. Every day at 6:00 p.m. a row of varying shades and shapes of arms swatted through iron bars like keys of a piano being struck, yipping for the phone-on-wheels. The tune of ruin.

“Hey, Barbie,” the hall monitor condescendingly called to me. Not sure where my cellie was, but I was alone. I ignored her. “Hey Barbie, I’m talking to you.” This person had tattoos of indiscernible Gothic letters on every part of her visible exterior. She looked hard, acted hard. More than exhausted, I was scared, and I almost answered. Then I remembered my cellie’s words. I decided to continue reading my book, disregarding her taunts.

Her tone softened, “... K.J.”

“Yes?” I finally responded.

“Why didn’t you answer me?”

“My name is not Barbie. My name is K.J.”

It was the first of many acts of defiance during my captivity.

*

I have had a recurring dream for about fifteen years that I lose my passport. In my recurring dream, I visit foreign countries for different reasons. Work, a study abroad program, vacation. My travels are as perfectly wonderful as any dreamy holiday, but I get stuck in the strange country—utterly helpless with no way of getting home. No mobile phone, no funds, nothing. I push lipstick aside in my handbag, lift nightstands. Where is my passport? I need to get to the airport for my flight home. I always wake up to the moment full panic has set in, unsettled and frustrated.

*

“Which one are you drawn to?” asked the pleasantly stout woman tending the vendor’s booth, walking toward me. “They say you should be naturally drawn to your birth totem.”

It was a year ago that I was prompted by the vendor. I had been looking at a display of hanging tree stumps with proud images of animals on the flat side of each slice. A Grizzly bear, an otter, falcon, snake, owl, and others. Dangling animal fragments like feathers and the rattle from a rattlesnake dazzled. She said these animals are birth totems, which are animal signs linked to your date of birth.

Since I was a child, my mother would drag my sisters and me to any and all Native cultural events. Harvest festivals, pow wows, sweat lodges. I’m not sure how she first met all the Native friends she had, but we got to know a few too. Brother Rick is Lakota, Sharisse is Nisenan. The woody fragrance of myrrh would linger from Sharisse’s smudge bowl. My mother has always had an attraction to indigenous peoples of North America, saying she has a spiritual connection. Maybe it was her friends’ kindness to her children, or how their easy calm juxtaposed to my mother’s chaotic high energy that led me to embrace an appreciation of cultural imagery. It’s probably why I found myself in that booth at the non-native apple farm looking for a spontaneous gift for her.

I pointed to a stump and said, “The wolf.”

She flipped the stump over where printed was information about the animal sign. She asked me about my birthday.

“Yes!” she said a little too excitedly when I answered, in only the way a salesperson can, “You are the wolf!”

*

Two weeks after my arrival at the dreaded maximum-security facility where I would spend the next 15 months, I was housed with seven other women in one cramped room. The term cellie replaced with roommate. “New fish on the block!” a roommate shouted to another as I stepped inside, the state-issued mesh laundry sack slung over my shoulder. My eyes widened. Inmates always wanted to know, why are you here, what did you do. As coached by my caffeinated cellie, I never told anyone why I was there. A few teased, “I bet she beat her boyfriend with a tennis racquet! At the country club!” as they howled in laughter. I must admit, it was funny, and I smirked along.

One of the women, Charlie, never stopped talking. Constantly ‘bragging’ about all the prison terms she’s done, how many asses she kicked, and how ‘bad’ she is on the streets. I tried my best to affix her voice to white noise, but it is difficult to do when locked inside concrete walls together.

One day I was rummaging through my locker. We were allowed scant provisions on commissary; food, clothing, and cleaning supplies, using funds provided by loved ones on the outside. Thankfully I always had funds on my account to get what I needed, plus a little bonus for a treat like coffee. A thousand thank yous to friends and family are not enough for the instant coffee and powdered vanilla creamer sent that made me feel somewhat human again. But some ladies weren’t as fortunate. Charlie was eating a mystery food she concocted from mystery sources when she approached me.

“Give me some mayonnaise.”

It is difficult to describe the rage that flooded me at that moment. Was this lowlife trying to demand something from me? Mayonnaise, nonetheless. Was Charlie attempting to place me in a subservient position, making me her little bitch from that point forward? She was not demanding I transport drugs across the yard to another prisoner, or something similarly illicit you see in movie prison scenes and what I was expecting – it was mayonnaise. Looking back, the absurdity of it all is laughable.

No one there, no one in the world, knew what hell I had gone through the last two-and-a-half years of my life. I felt I did not belong there. Stripped of my name, I was now a number. Stripped of all possessions, I was now property of the state. Stripped of all dignity, I now had body hollows searched by officers at every whim. Physically and emotionally plundered before, during, and after trial, I was done being a whipping post. I had to reclaim something as my own. And it was this demand for my fatty American condiment that made me reach my breaking point.

I slammed my locker shut, turned around, stopped just an inch from her nose and said, “I’m not giving anything to anyone,” with my jaw as equally clenched as my hands.

By challenging her, I mean that I have never felt such fear in my life of impending physical harm. I mean that I thought my pounding heart might actually crack my chest open with the ferocity of its hammering before the literal pounding of her fists. My plan from the start of my prison term was to curl into a ball on the floor if I found myself in this type of situation. I would not fight back. Remember, I was not going to have my time extended under any circumstance, and neither was I a fighter.

The usual buzzing conversations in the room had quieted, all eyes fixed on the two of us. Charlie looked at me for a few seconds, nose to nose, and started stepping backwards. I’m not sure if it’s because she was afraid of my tennis racquet skills or the formal consequences of paperwork if she kicked my ass, but she conceded. The next several minutes were spent with Charlie raging around the room, spouting off unintelligible nonsense, hitting walls, throwing small objects. I stood there, an immovable monument. I watched her undoing like the unwavering, intense stare of, well, a wolf. Maintain your distance, my gaze warned. And then she was quiet. At last, she stopped talking. Defeat is the greatest silencer.

I climbed to my top bunk only when she had retreated to her bottom bunk on the opposite side of the room. I sat there, staring blankly, perplexed and amazed by my own audacity. I can’t believe I just did that, I thought. And, it worked? I walked away unscathed? This time, anyway. Another roommate on the top bunk across from me signaled a thumbs up and mouthed the words, “Good job.” Unscathed and validated, too. It was a side of me, an unabashed version, that never existed before. The new bold persona I decided to claim was emerging from the darkest depths, wearing an orange jumpsuit. I didn’t know I had hungered for it for so long. The corners of my mouth started to curl up.

*

The 12 birth totems, including the wolf, are plotted on directional sectors of the Medicine Wheel. The Medicine Wheel is a sacred symbol to many indigenous cultures and represents health, healing, and the interconnectedness of all life. It is used as a guiding tool for balance, cycles of life, and spiritual, emotional, and physical wellness. Acknowledging the distinction, indigenous practices should not be conflated with the Medicine Wheel. I do not claim traditional indigenous practices as my own; I’m reflecting on why the wolf as a totem animal has become a meaningful symbol to me.

One of the most important lessons for the wolf on this turn of the Medicine Wheel is to stand in the seat of their own power. I didn’t understand what this meant. A little research revealed it has many meanings, but one of them is to set firm boundaries. In terms of the animal, this would mean the wolf secures its land territories from outside threats, rival packs, and more. For people who fall under the animal sign of the wolf, this means knowing when and how to say ‘no.’ It means being your authentic self.

*

A designated passport dictates strict borders for those who carry one—where we are from, where we belong, where we are going. Since my recurring dream doesn’t allow me to get home, I surmise that I haven’t yet learned to establish my spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical boundaries. That is, the sacred boundaries of my many selves, of home. Therefore, I am unable to move freely, to return to my safe space, because I have yet to define where and what that is.

*

Many more attempted propositions, demands, extortion, and bullying were directed my way. “No” became my middle name as the running joke. I was so proud of it, I just might have drawn the word on my forehead. Not in Gothic letters, though.

“You know, K.J., you’re a lot smarter than the other girls here,” said the biggest, toughest woman in the whole prison. No one, and I mean no one, messed with this premier badass. She happened to be my roommate.

“’No’ is your favorite word!” she laughed.

*

One of my earliest childhood memories is at a pow wow at the California State Fair. I was so little I could barely see the dancers over the foldable metal chairs. I remember wrapping my arm around the tubular steel leg to feel its coolness against the sizzling July heat. On stage were big, strong shirtless men donning feather headdresses, dance bells on their legs, and painted faces. And the drums. The giant, pounding drums carried all the way from the stadium and up through my chest. I was mesmerized. They paused and asked the audience if anyone would like to join on stage. My mother joyfully raised her hand and walked up to the stage. No one else. Not a single other person in the entire audience of hundreds participated, only my mother. Even as a child, that struck me as odd. They enticed the audience again, still nothing, so the show went on. My petite blond mother in her delicate summer dress enthusiastically stomped and twirled alongside large, colorful brass-clad men. She was delighted with genuine admiration, her smile a ray of summer. In that moment she was integrating the different chapters of her life, her unique self, moving along.

*

The narrative of my dream has shifted slightly only in the last four months, two dreams. Which is seven months since I eyed the wolf emblem. In these latest dreams my passport is still missing, but I remember where it was left. I just need to retrieve it before I can make my flight home. In my last two dreams, I was resourceful rather than a passive observer of my own life. In one dream, I asked a stranger to use their mobile phone to call the friend who had my passport. In the other, I kindly asked a stranger for their bus ticket to backtrack to the last city I visited, where I had left my passport behind. Still, I wake up before I get my passport back. The plot twist changed when I started to write about my experience with the criminal justice system for the first time.

*

I have come to understand that it was not, and still is not, very difficult to set exact boundaries with people I don’t know or care about. And, through great pains, I now understand that I was in no position to feel “better” than others I was locked away with. My arrogance of the time is embarrassing. But someone I view as an equal and more, whether it’s in a professional setting, playdate with other parents, and especially those closest to you, family, it is far more difficult to understand when setting a boundary is necessary—much less follow it with conviction. It’s not just about knowing your limits; it’s about announcing them.

*

The wolf is a pathfinder. The wolf maps out its territories. More than that, the wolf knows when to defend boundaries and when not to fight. The wolf teaches us to know our place.

*

Now, let me tell you what brought me to literal steel shackles. It wasn’t retaliation I was seeking on the night of infamy. I was violated in the rawest form and tried to regain some semblance of power that was stolen from me—through the brute force of my then-lover. Entitlement is a drug; intoxicating, insatiable, and nasty.

*

Contemporary astrology, Native and western and otherwise, is an information system, not a science. Crafted presentations are an artful way to validate and honor information systems like animal totems, such as the howling wolf image in the vendor’s booth. Western astrology and birth totems are often enjoyed as a fun, light past time activity for those who choose to indulge. But if an information system can be used as a guiding tool to learn valuable life lessons with remarkable benefits, why not pay attention when the wolf makes an appearance?

-K.J. Quimby

K.J. Quimby is a writer living in Sacramento, California. She holds an M.A. in Sociology from California State University, Sacramento. When she is not chasing her toddler on command with a giant teddy bear, she is working on her essay collection. Her work explores identity and resilience. This is her debut publication.