Lock Up Girl: A True Story

Lock Up Girl, Part 1

Death by dental floss; I know, it sounds almost funny now. So let me tell you about it; what I remember, that is, about how it all went down. How I got from here to there. From there to here.

I became Lock Up Girl a short while after my 14th birthday. They'd been threatening to put me away for years, but what with everything that had already gone down, I guess I had long moved past wasting my time worrying that They would actually place me in Baltic. Over the years I'd spent short periods of time in what the system called respite. Respite, despite, spite, fight. Another name for a short time in a foster home, a group home, not ever a home home, whatever the fuck that actually is. After so much of that same-same, dancing around our troubles. I didn't believe my social worker would really follow through with sending me, Anessa, away for good. But hey, I suppose, like me, she had finally become fed up with playing these constant bullshit games of : "be nice" and "let's try again". All those empty promises, the laughable threats. But then, even though Mark's trial was way back in the past, there had been that fight. Charges. Doctors reports. Youth Court. Labels. And now it had actually come down to this: oh-so-lucky me, the special girl, was getting backed up to a residential treatment centre for teenage girls. Sent away to lock up for a minimum of thirty days. Or maybe for good, hissed Diane. For her good. Gone.

Anessa the special girl. I'd never ever felt special actually, despite all the things my dad and those other guys had whispered to me when I was lying there, so little, so alone. I have always really hated people who think and act like they and the things they say and do are All That. Like it is always all about them, everything. People who try to make the others around them feel small. Who do whatever they can to get all the attention, to make themselves the one who stands out. Me, I wasn't like that. I hadn't ever gone through life saying: World! People! Look at me! Look at special me! It had been just the opposite in fact. But somehow whatever I did, whatever I didn't do, it all seemed to end up being everybody else's business anyway. Special me, always in the limelight, being watched. Anessa caught, captured, in the lens of the camera. But still, I didn't believe my mom and the system would actually follow up on that blackmail and end up sending me away. But then, just like that, she, it, They, did.

I remember raging, screaming soundlessly in the back of the police car. I wasn't going to yell or fight or, worst of all, cry; wasn't going to show them that they had gotten to me, that they had touched my core. No way I'd ever do that. Not ever. Keep the outside blank, keep the back straight, keep both eyes open and clear, and don't let them think they have the power. So, no, once the two cops had shoved me into the back of the patrol car, jerking my head forward and down, scraping the edge of my scalp on the metal frame of the door, once I had seen after noiselessly trying to slide my wrists that I couldn't squeeze out of the heavy handcuffs, once I was belted in and the screen separated me and the bitch cops driving in the front, I put on The Mask and sat up straight, quiet and in control. You're not the boss of me, I thought. Just wait. I can wait. I will wait.

For years I'd been hearing all about Baltic of course. Those earnest lectures from my social worker, from the staff at the group home. Diane, my mother, that beyatch, had gotten off on using it as a sometimes threat to pretend she had all the power over me. You be good Anessa, or they're going to send you to Baltic. I'll just lift up the phone and get Them to take you away. Lock you away. Then you'll see. Then you'll learn. That will show you.

The social worker whom I'd known half my life, the cops who would come by whenever they thought we were "in crisis", as they put it - even though I was just trying to live my fucked up life, do my thing, wanting just to be left alone, leave me be all of you; leave me be, Mark, stop, don't do that, not there - they all would make dark promises intended to shut me down: "If this continues we're going to send her to Baltic", "We'll put her in placement", "We're going to have to make her see we are serious". But time passed, life went on and on, nothing changed, and it felt like just more bullshit, all of it.

There was the one time after that first huge fight, when Diane had hit me with the pan and I'd punched her in the stomach, and then we'd both got into kicking and screaming so loudly that the nosy neighbors had called the cops. Back then my social worker had sent me to a group home for two weeks; fourteen days of rehab placement, system punishment, with a gaggle of annoying little pre-teens for me while Diane still got to live her life, party on, just go, deny everything and wash her hands of me. I didn't even care enough to tell them what had really happened; what, start telling the truth now and just where would that land me? But after my time was up I got to come back home again, lucky special me, and life went on in its same sad, crappy way, nothing really changed at all except Diane and I both knowing so well what we were capable of doing to each other. I could grind her head to pulp if I chose, pull that scraggly hair by the roots, punch her so hard she'd lose her breath, rip her, shred her, leave my mark all over her blotchy skin. And she could just lift up the phone and turn my life upside down.