Lets Play Ball (Week 5)

I once was a criminal. That’s what they said. Cuffed, arms twisted, metal tight, cold, pressed, digging into my wrists.

Set my elbows straight, I asked.
No one answered.

They’re too tight, I said.
No one heard me. One cop looked, rolled his eyes. You should’ve thought of that, he said. I should of thought of that. That’s what they always said. I wasn’t a criminal, just a girl. They didn’t get it. I didn’t get it. I didn’t want to. I didn’t know.

Life was moving at a rate I couldn’t comprehend. I was good in my bones, I could feel it, I knew it, but raw in my skin. Morality? What a question. Criminals may be moral, and often more than not, they are. I was moral at the core; three crimes within four years; three different jail cells, jail mates, good cops, bad cops.

I’m a lady I’d think. Treat me like one. They never did. Seven escorts the last time. Who did they think I was? A mass murderer? They always blow it out of proportion. That’s what I told myself. The criminal justice system is faulted, it’s a fraud. I am not a criminal, I would tell myself. I would tell them. I would tell the system. Nobody believed me. I was nothing, a delinquent, a hassle.

Can I get some respect? No.
Will anybody listen? No.
I couldn’t handle the lectures. At fifteen, a bad cop fucked with me, told me I was going to die. He was chewing tobacco with his mouth gaping, grinning through blackened teeth. My eyes were heavy, dry. He spit in a Folgers can inches from my foot. I despised him. I despised the law.

Criminals feel sorry for themselves, that’s what they told me in rehab. Was I? Self pity, was that what it was all about? Fuck the system I thought. Age made me wiser to the law, the games. I played, skipped through the boundaries. I'd been hit hard, twice, it couldn't happen again; I thought. Morality? It was there in the recesses of my mind. Its cat and mouse. I was Robin Hood, Joan of Arc. Crimes validated by the system, not without cause or justification in the back of my mind.

It was the last time, the fluke, the near death, and a conversation that finally brought me to a halt. There was a good cop. He wrote me a letter. I would like to talk to you, he said. He was not my arresting officer, just a jolly old sideliner in the passenger seat of the car. What are you doing? He said. You are young and beautiful and intelligent, don’t you know that? He said. Why do you put yourself here? He said.

I didn’t put myself here, I said.

Yes, you did, he said. Never argue with a cop, I knew. He had the last words. They stuck. They marinated, stewed.

You put yourself here. I did. I did. I did. Ithought. I put myself here. I put myself here, and I am not a victim of the system. I am a criminal; a girl, still, but a criminal. Who was I? Where was I?

I had to work hard. I had to grow hard. I had to take responsibility for my actions. I had to claim choice. I had to love outside of myself. I had to exchange self-destruction and chaos for morality and social consciousness. It was life or death, and it took three strikes for me to finally get a home run.