I lived like a convict in my own house. Dad and I weren't able to communicate with each other. He hadn't even asked me if I had done what the police said I had. Part of that was because he knew I wouldn't and part of it was he just couldn't bear the thought of questioning me. I couldn't talk to him because of everything that had happened to him; losing his job, the attacks on the house, the humiliation, and mom and Shela moving out. Whenever we did talk we were trying to bolster the other one. We kept having this plastic dialog where we never said anything important. We just kept talking about how we were learning to do yard work better or fix windows better. We never talked about why we suddenly had so much yard work or so many broken windows. We never got to say what was on our minds.
I wanted desperately to get out of the house. The need to talk to someone was not fulfilled. I had always talked my problems out. I would have loved to been able to get together with Toni or Sid or even Dick, but I was afraid to leave the yard for fear the police would say I had done something else.
They were watching me, the police were. When I was out cleaning the yard I would see them drive by and eyeball me. There had almost never been patrol cars in our neighborhood. The police were coming by just to check on me. I almost felt like just raising my hands and let them take me back downtown.
I thought of calling Johnny and asking him to come over so I could talk to him. That wouldn't work. It would be as unfair to him as it had been to my family to ask him to help me. I would only cause him the same estrangement in the community that dad, mom, and Shela had suffered. I couldn't do that to anyone else.
The nights were terrible. I keep having the fear of dying rob me of any chance of a good night's sleep. The pills Dr. Watts had prescribed for me had been taken by the police as evidence. They had gone through everything I had. I had no secrets from them. They had taken them all. My whole room had been torn completely apart by the police. Mom had tried to straighten it out for me before things got too bad and she had to leave with Shela.
I wondered if Shela would ever come around. If it had been just the fact that I was a CB it would have been a big shock for her. Throw in everything else, like how I had hurt mom and dad, and I knew she hated me completely.
What was I to do? I still didn't know if I was going to jail or if dad would pay me out. He had put up 5,000 credits for the accident and he had to sell my car to get the other 10,000 credits for the drug charges. My payout was 12,000 which meant he would get 3,000 credits back. Without a job he needed the whole fifteen thousand. I was leaning towards going back to jail.
The police had me afraid that they were going to pull up in front of the house at any moment and arrest me for somebody's murder or something.
The punishment one gets for doing a crime is pretty traumatic in itself. When the system turns against you and starts accusing you of things that you haven't done and wouldn't do then it...it eats at you.
What was that experiment that guy did with the dog? He trained a dog to step on a metal plate and the dog would get fed. Then he put a light in the cage with the dog. If the dog stepped on the plate and the light was out it would get fed. If the light was on when the dog stepped on the plate the dog would receive a mild electrical charge. The dog learned to not step on the metal plate when the light was on. That proved the dog could learn. He took another dog and trained it to step on the plate when there was a picture of a circle in the cage and not to when there was a picture of a square. The dog did fine. Then the guy kept rounding the corners of the square and bending the shape of the circle to be more square. As it got to the point where the dog was having a hard time telling the difference between which picture was supposed to be a circle and which one was supposed to be a square the dog developed paranoia. It went insane.
That was me. I couldn't tell when I would be rewarded for something I had done or if I would be punished. I knew this was happening to me and I wondered if I would go bonkers like the dog had. I thought of calling Dr. Watts at school. She could help. Maybe I had been doing wrong. If someone would just point it out to me I'd be glad to stop.
I called the school and got Dr. Watts' secretary. Dr. Watts wasn't in. She told me I would have to come in if I wanted to make an appointment. I left a message telling the doctor who I was and that it was urgent that I get in contact with her. The call was not returned.
***
It was the day of my trial. Dad and I were in the car going to the courthouse. That's when he finally let me know that he was going to pay me out. There was something about the way he said it. Like there was no choice. I couldn't even thank him. It was just how he had decided it was going to be and that's all there was to it. I was costing him a lot of money, now just sit there and be grateful. It was a sentence in itself.
I never even got to go into the courtroom. I wanted to talk to someone--anyone. I wanted someone to explain to me what I should do. No one told me. I guess I was just a CB and what more did I need to know than that?
I was taken home and put in my room. I sat on my bed and waited. I didn't know what for I just waited. In the evening I was told to fix super and eat, afterwards I was told to go to bed.
The fear of death returned to me as I lay waiting to go to sleep. I was no longer afraid of it.
***
The next day was a busy one. Dad told me it was time to get on with my life. I had been expelled from school and I would not be allowed back. I could finish my education in night school if I cared to. Dad decided that I needed a job and a place of my own to stay. He was nearly broke. I would have to get along by myself. If I got into anymore trouble he wouldn't be able to help me.
He found me a place to live and a job. I was taken to the job interview. Dad told me what to say. I answered all question truthfully and to the best of my ability. I became a waitress. Dad wrote down the name of the place I worked, the address, and the phone number. I was taken to my new home and left with the number of my release officer. If I had any problems I could call that number and there would be somebody there to help me thirty hours a day.
Dad, having fulfilled his obligations to me, left to be with his family--mom and Shela.
I had what I needed, two pieces of paper. One piece of paper had a circle on it and the other had a square. I was sure of that. I just wasn't sure which one had what. They looked alike to me.
Go to work. Return to new home. Go to bed. Repeat as often as desired.
The whole book in zipfile format.
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