JustUs: The Cost of a Call
A simple request for a phone call from jail to protect a child is denied, and with that comes a story of a call for greater humanity in the criminal legal system and a reflection on the mental health challenges facing not only inmates, but officers of the law as well.
“Can I please make a phone call?”
“Can I please make a phone call?”
“Can I please make a phone call? I was told I could make a phone call. Can I please make a phone call?”
I sat in the holding area waiting to make that call. I worried about a 16-year-old I was responsible for and who was waiting for me to pick him up from basketball practice. I asked the sheriff again, “Can I please make a phone call?”
I worried about my sister-friend who entrusted me with her most valued possession — her beautiful son — while she was out of town. “Can I please make a phone call?”
I worried about him sitting in the darkness of the parking lot, wondering where his ride was — wondering where I was: “Can I please make a phone call? I was told I had a right to make a phone call.”
I asked a woman being released from the holding area if she would make that call to a friend for me. But I worried whether the woman had actually been able to reach my friend and let her know that baby needed to be picked up and cared for because I didn’t know when I would get out. “Can I please make a phone call?”
People in the criminal legal system say they are worried about our mental health — those of us locked in your jails and prisons. But you don’t appear to be worried about your officers, your guards, and their mental health. You would have thought I did something to that sheriff. The way she exploded at me when I asked to make a call.
I wanted to tell her, “Stop screaming at me. Stop threatening me! I just want to make a call. Please.” But I was in her jail and she had all the keys. So all I could do was witness the bright shades of red creeping up her neck, her face twisted in rage, spit flying out of her mouth at me, feet stomping and arms flailing. Look at her. She’s losing her mind. What happened to her? What happened to her to behave this way and be so cruel? “Oh god,” I thought, “I don’t belong here.”
I sat in the holding cell for several more hours: packed in like sardines, squished up by the window, peeking out at the sky. I hoped the shift would change and the next Sheriff would allow me to make my call before that child found himself alone on the street. But meanwhile, I had to deal with the current sheriff, and her mental health was off the chain. I watched how her illness showed up with me and others in her rage. She should’ve had a “Fit-for-Duty” exam.
Corrections officers, police officers: Why aren’t they getting evaluated? The studies of police departments show that a small percentage of officers account for the vast majority of misconduct. They are being violent and aggressive over and over again, and yet they’re still on duty, still getting paid, still terrorizing communities. Why? Why are police officers shooting 12- and 13-year-old kids? If they are so scared that they would shoot a kid, they shouldn’t be doing the job.
What is the cost of healing? What is the cost of humanity?
I remember when I finally received therapy from those who looked like me, I found freedom from the mental plantation. Freedom from the chains of trauma of being molested and raped. Healing from the physical and emotional wounds of domestic violence and so many betrayals. Before that, my whole life, ever since I was a child, I had been the one pathologized, told that I was the problem, that somehow I was crazy: ‘I’m going to take you to the mental health doctor and drop you off, blah, blah, blah.’ I remember fighting that: “I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy.’’ And then a few years ago, a friend and mentor of mine finally said to me, gently and with love, “Let me give you a gift … you are.”
And when I heard those words, I was able to accept the fact, “Yeah, I got a touch-a-crazy,” living in this crazy world, watching what’s happening to others and still somehow managing all the crazy things that have happened to me: Raped and beaten multiple times as a 9-year-old child by an older cousin when I was left in my aunt’s care, my body violated by his rage when my mother was on a conjugal visit in Hawaii with my dad, who was on leave from the Vietnam War. When I tried to tell my aunt what happened, she told me I was “nasty” and not to speak of it. No teacher acknowledged the bruises or the change in my affect. No one did anything. I was just 9, and they had all the keys.
At age 12, beaten by my mother, called “whore” when the doctor told her I wasn’t a virgin. Neither my mother nor that doctor asked why I didn’t have a hymen or what happened to me. Instead of any inquiry, questions, sympathy or help, my mother pulled my hair, punched my face, punched my body: “Whore … bitch … slut.” And I couldn’t get away. She was my mother. That was her home. She had all the keys.
And the violence continued — raped again at 16, married at 18 to a man who beat me. And when I finally saved enough grocery money and sanity to leave, I finally did have a key to my own apartment that I could lock and unlock myself. But I didn’t have enough money to live: a single working mother, no child support, not poor enough to qualify for public assistance, and not rich enough to survive. I worked two or three jobs and hired a babysitter, only to find out my own daughter was at risk under her care and the cycle of sexual violence might be starting all over again.
So when an opportunity arose where I could make just as much money moving drugs as if I were working three jobs, I started selling, slanging, watching my back, afraid. But I was now making enough for rent and food. The keys in my pocket.
I never sold from my home; I always had my routes. And I kept selling until I got a phone call one morning stating my dealer got jumped and his body stuffed into his trunk. Would I be next — jumped and stuffed into a trunk?
My biggest regret in life is not figuring out some way to get counseling support for the trauma of physical abuse early on, because one abusive relationship turned into another, turned into another, turned into another, turned into you — the “justice” system.
And now, here I am in your jail, and the sheriff has all the keys and she’s screaming, “No phone calls!” She’s turning all shades of bright red that are creeping up her neck. She doesn’t seem to care that there’s a boy waiting for me in a dark parking lot. Protecting him is somehow not her business. Her business is telling me to shut up, her face twisted, spit flying from her mouth.
I could still hear her yelling as they took me to my cell. I lay down on the lower bunk. The woman on the top bunk jumps down to use the stall — that steel semblance of a toilet. It’s dirty. You can see the brown splatters all around it. I gag at the stench. It’s overcoming my senses. I don’t belong here. I don’t belong here.
She sits on that silver metal and starts lighting up a broken glass crack pipe. I asked, “Where’d you get that from?” She laughs and says, “Do you want some?” (“No, I’m good.”)
I watch her smoke. We’re locked into this cell together and now she’s losing her mind. She’s losing her damn mind. “Oh god,” I thought. “I don’t belong here. Can I please make a phone call? This is just more crazy. This is just more crazy.”
What is the cost of a phone call? The cost of healing? Of humanity? Is prison and jail really your best answer? Your best thinking? Don’t tell me this is simply collateral consequences to my crime. Don’t tell me that you can justify the violence and inhumanity within the legal system because I broke the law. Stop defending the legal system like it’s not crazy. I’m telling you kindly, right now, with love, it’s crazy. What you are doing to women and men in the name of justice is crazy. And our communities will begin to heal when you admit what is so … a broken system.
Can I please make a phone call? Because I need out of here. You … you need out of here. We all need out of here. It’s not safe. Who’s got the keys?
Cynthia Randall is a Motus Theater JustUs monologist from the Boundless Truth project, a certified addiction specialist, unlicensed psychotherapist and acupuncture detoxification specialist, and a practitioner of traditional medicine. Cynthia is an extraordinary family advocate, a champion for social justice, and a community connector with over 19 years’ experience in restorative justice facilitation, human services, and program development.
This autobiographical story was written by Cynthia Randall in collaboration with Kirsten Wilson as part of Motus Theater’s JustUs Project: Stories From the Frontlines of the Criminal Justice System.
To book a performance or find out more about the Motus Theater JustUs Project, email info@motustheater.org