The Truth About Butterflies: A Memoir (18 page)

As she was
talking, I went into her room and saw her large sketch pad and sketching
pencils scattered on the bed.  Interested in fashion design, she’d recently
gone to one of the art universities for an open house.  “How did you violate
your probation?”  I asked.

“Missed my
last two appointments… behind on my fees.”

She said
she’d call me the next day after she went to court, which she did, telling me
that the judge had ordered
alternative incarceration.

“What
does that mean?”

“Boot camp. 
I have to go for 90 days.”

“When do you
go?”

“I’m on a
waiting list.  I have to wait ‘til a bed comes available.”

“How long will
that take?”

“Who knows!”

Nicole’s
attorney requested that she be sent home on a monitor because firstly, she had
been charged with probation violation and not with committing a new offence and
secondly because she had kidney problems, high blood pressure, and was an insulin-dependent
diabetic.  The wait for boot camp, he said, was too long.  The request was
denied.

After
waiting for over four months to do her 90 days in boot camp, Nicole asked me to
contact her probation officer.  I called the PO and told him, “Nicole was
sentenced to 90 days in boot camp, but she’s been waiting for four months just
to go.”

“It’s not
time
that she’s being punished with; the boot camp
experience
is what the
judge wants her to have,” he said.

So she
waited over six months before they had a bed for her at the camp.  In the
meantime, they’d been sending her out to see a nephrologist for her renal
failure.  The day before she was scheduled to have renal stents put in, they
shipped her out to boot camp.  “Don’t worry,” she said.  “At least now we know
I’ll be home in 90 days.”

The boot
camp was a couple hours away, and I was told I could bring Nicole some personal
items: sundries, underclothes, some books, etc….  When I brought the items, they
told me I could have a short visit, but the actual visitation would start a few
days later.

When I
arrived a few days later and signed in at the front window, the receptionist
asked me to step over to another area and wait for the supervisor.  I thought
that maybe I’d placed an unapproved item in the care package, but when the
supervisor arrived, she said, “Miss Stephan, your daughter has a lot of serious
health issues, and we’re not equipped to handle that level of care; unfortunately,
we’ve refused to accept her into our program.  I’m sorry.”

“So do I
just take her home?”

“She’s already
gone.  We notified them that we couldn’t accept her because of her health.”

“So should I
just go back to the jail and wait for her there?”

“You should
probably wait for Nicole to call you.”

As I walked
back to the car, I thought what a waste it was that she had spent six months in
jail to do a 90-day program that eventually refused to take her.  I drove the
two hours home and waited for Nicole to call.

Later that
night, the phone rang and startled me out of a deep sleep.  Before the operator
connected us, I’d already concluded that Nicole was back at the jail, and she
was calling to tell me when to pick her up the next day.  But when the call was
patched through, Nicole, whimpering on the other end, said, “Mommy, I’m in
prison.”

I sat
straight up in bed, “What do you mean you’re in prison?”  Barely able to talk
through the tears, she said, “They told me the prison had a full medical
facility, so I have to do my time here.”  I couldn’t believe that was true. 
Surely they can’t just take someone to prison.  There’s a process; a person
must be sentenced to prison, but she was insistent, and though I didn’t want
to, I believed her. 

Hearing Nicole
cry was gut wrenching.  Because she was a high-maintenance child, I’d always
held her feet to the fire.  As such, she was tough and had no problem paying
the piper.  I’d never known her to cry over anything.  I tried to soothe her; I
told her I’d get to the bottom of it first thing in the morning.  I was up for the
rest of the night.

The next
morning I called the probation officer; he wasn’t available, so I spoke to
someone else.  “I was told that she was sentenced to boot camp for the
experience and not for the time,” I told the person on the other end.  “So if
she’s too sick for boot camp, why was she taken to a prison to sit for 90 days
when she’s already been in jail for six months?” 

“If it wasn’t
for parents like you,” the person said, “always trying to get their kid off the
hook, the prisons wouldn’t be so full.”

I spent the
better part of the morning calling different people who only passed me on to
other people.  When Nicole called, much to my relief, she’d made a complete turn
around.  “I’m okay, Ma.  I don’t want you stressing over this.”  Knowing that
she was no longer crying was a huge burden off my shoulders.  “I’m gonna go to
the law library and see what I can do,” she said.  I told her that I’d been
making calls all morning but getting nowhere.  “If they’re giving you the run
around, just stop calling.  I’ll do what I can do from in here.”  My old Nicole
was back.  She’d found her footing and had pulled herself together.

Not making
any headway with the probation office, I remembered that a friend of mine once
worked for the prison; I gave him a call.  “I can’t do anything to get her out,
but while she’s in there, you won’t have to worry about anything,” he said. 
When I went for the first visitation, they couldn’t find Nicole in the system. 
“We don’t have an inmate by that name,” they assured me, but after looking
through the computer and making calls, one of the officers said, “Oh, she’s
here for medical.”

“Does that
mean she’s separate from the other prisoners?”  I asked.

“No, it just
means she’s listed differently because she’s not one of
our
inmates.”

After that
initial check-in, everything went smoothly.  However, it was quite different
from visiting Nicole at the jail, where I’d enter the building, go through a
metal detector, and walk down the hall for my visit.  Instead, I walked through
a detector, was patted down, walked through a court yard, and passed through
two tall electrified fences crowned with curly rows of shiny barbed wire. 
Visitation was held in the gymnasium.  Visitors would stand against the wall
until their loved ones came into the gym and sat down; the visitors would then
join them.

Nicole was
in good spirits.  She insisted that I not worry because she was writing up some
kind of appeal.  I told her I would let her handle it even though I continued
to call the probation officer and anyone else who would listen.  My friend had told
me not to worry about anything, but I was surprised that the guards made a
point to tell me that Nicole was in good hands, one telling me to “Think of us
guards as guardian angels.” 

On my next
visit, Nicole told me that the supervisor himself had come to check on her and
that someone had placed so much money on her books that she could purchase
whatever she wanted from commissary.  “And the inmates are so nice to me;
everyone looks out for me.  My cell mates wake me up during the night to make
sure my sugar hasn’t dropped.” 

Nicole took
in all the stories of these women who rallied around her and told her she
should thank God for this experience because “not many get to see what prison
life is really like without actually being sentenced to do time here.” 

“This is it
for me, Ma,” she said.  “When I get out of here, you’re gonna see a whole new
me.”  Neither of us knew what was waiting around the corner. 

Time passed
quickly.  Nicole continued to work on her appeal, and I continued to make calls. 
Even though we both knew by then that our efforts were futile, the process kept
us busy.  Two weeks before she was to be released, I arrived for my visit.  Altogether,
she’d been incarcerated for nearly a year, and we were in the final countdown. 

As I stood
along the wall waiting for her to come in, the other inmates and their visitors,
whom I had gotten to know, were staring at me in a most noticeable way, almost as
if I were on stage.  When Nicole finally came in, I couldn’t believe my eyes. 
Her left arm was bandaged and in a sling, there were bandages on her chest, and
her face was swollen.  As I rushed to get to her, she was reaching out to me
with her good arm.  “Look what they did to me, Mommy.”

“Who beat
you up like this?”  I asked.  With her head resting on my shoulder, she said,
“No one beat me up, Mommy.  I’m on dialysis now.”

I didn’t
know where to begin.  How could she have had surgery and been placed on
dialysis without my being notified?  Nicole lifted her bandaged arm.  “They
rewired my veins and arteries to make a ‘fish’
[10]
for dialysis.  Then
they put this tube in my neck, and they’re gonna use it for dialysis until my ‘fish’
heals.  Mommy, Tell them I don’t want the dialysis.”

By then, one
of the guards was walking toward us, and as Nicole was crying and we were both
visibly upset, I thought she was coming to tell us to quiet down.  Instead, she
told Nicole, “They’re ready for you.”

“Ready for
me for what?”

“For your dialysis.”

“I don’t
want it.”

“C’mon now
baby girl, you need to get your dialysis so you don’t get sick.”

“I don’t
need it; tell her, Mommy.”

“Nicole,” I
said, holding back my own tears, “It’s okay; go ahead and do your dialysis. 
You’ll be home in two weeks, and if it turns out that you don’t need it, then
you can stop.”

“But what’s
gonna happen to me when they drain all the blood from my body?”

And I
realized she had no clue what dialysis was or how it worked.

“It’s not
like that,” the guard said.  “You just lay back and read a book or take a nap. 
Ain’t nothing to it; you’ll see.”

And so
Nicole wrapped her good arm around my neck and kissed me.  Then she followed
the guard to her first dialysis session.

When I
reached the parking lot, the reality of it settled over me, and I wept.  She
had gone through this with limited, if any, education and no support.  Instead,
she’d been taken to the hospital, in the company of a guard, with her wrists
shackled to her waist.

Even so, I
had very little time for grieving.  Nicole was coming home on dialysis, and I
had no idea how or where to begin with getting her set up; I had less than two
weeks to figure it out.  I called Eunice, and she helped me get the preparations
underway.

The day of
Nicole’s release, I was euphoric.  I arrived at the prison after having picked
up a bouquet of flowers.  I had the day planned out, and I was ready to have my
daughter home again.  But when I arrived, they told me that Nicole was no
longer at the prison.  “She wasn’t our inmate to begin with,” the officer told
me.  “She was just here for medical.  We sent her back to the boot camp; you’ll
have to pick her up there.”

I made the two-hour
trip to the camp where I waited another three hours for her to be released.  I
watched as she walked down a narrow, fenced corridor where a guard looked over
her release papers and then unlocked the gate to let her out.  She got in the
car, and we embraced.  As I held her close, I was aware of the central line
catheter resting beneath her shirt.  I was also aware of Dialysis, who had
climbed into the backseat and tightened its seatbelt for the ride.  “I can’t
believe I’m finally free,” Nicole said as we pulled out onto the country road. 
But our silent backseat passenger would make it his business to ensure that Nicole
would never really be free again.  

Dialysis was
my daughter’s enemy, and, therefore, my enemy.  I know Dialysis is a savior to
many, which puts me in a precarious position.  How can I put the screws to it
like I want to when so many people depend on it? 

I could talk
about the first time I saw it done, how it reminded me of embalming or how the
clinic always smelled like vinegar, as if people were in a back room coloring
Easter eggs.  I could explain that Dialysis is like a giant wizard that’s
controlled by people working the ropes and pulleys.  And to help you really
envision what it was like for Nicole, I could ask you to imagine yourself sick in
the emergency room; the nurse says to you, “You’ve come to the right place,” but
then she finds out it’s your kidneys, and she says, “Oh, kidneys are a
different part of medicine all together.  You’ll want to get back in your car,
and take a left out of the parking lot; then keep south until the sun
disappears and the clouds begin to gather.”

I could also
explain that Nicole was provided with manuals on what not to eat, what not to
drink, and what not to do, but she was never given a single pamphlet on how to
cope with the fear.  I could tell you about the summer of 2006, but you wouldn’t
believe me. 

As funny as it might sound, I could tell you
about the imaginary cue cards the kidney doctors carried in the breast pocket
of their lab coats: