FREEDOM
Guilty of attempted murder, they said. The only real question was if I got sent to a hospital or a jail.
Which one would keep me the longest, was what I wanted to know.
"That depends," the young starry-eyed kid who was my free lawyer said, "on how quickly you respond to treatment and jail would be the standard sentence."
I think that kid smoked pot, not that it matters to me, but I recognize that glassy stare from having kids of my own. Of course I chose jail. I knew it would be quieter, more peaceful and I was right. Oh, they make me come out of my cell and do a few things, but it ain't half bad. And the rest of the time I get to read or think my own thoughts.
The best part is that they don't trust us to make promises or keep vows. The only vow I took in my life didn't work out so well. I mean I took it serious and all. I just wished I could have taken it back.
My sister says you can. She says the marriage vows are broken all the time that they don't really mean 'til death do you part'. I would have divorced him if I could of. I mean the only reason we married in the presence of God was for his mother's sake, so its not like that would of stopped me. No, it wasn't the vow before the Almighty that stopped me. It was him.
Oh, how he cried and carried on that time I did up and leave. Slept with my picture on his pillow for the whole seven months. My kids say he even set me a place at the Christmas table. It was a bit of a confusion for them, they said, what with him setting that place then crying so hard he couldn't eat a thing, but then called me a whore through his sobs even though I was with a group of women. Wasn't no sex to it at all.
I tried to explain things and to console him the whole time I was away. My sister had the number and she dialed it up for him. Mostly he went on and on about how he couldn't live without me and tried to trick me into telling him where I was, always asking about the weather and had we had many storms where I was. He said he didn't really blame me that he understood that between mid-life crisis and brainwashing that I wasn't really at fault.
He assured me that I wouldn't have to do anything like cook or wash his clothes if I came home. "You can be a lady of leisure." He said more than once.
I tried to explain that it wasn't about cooking or laundry. I mean the place where I was I did more cooking and laundry than he could ever imagine. I tried to make him understand that it was what I had to do, that I had a calling and I was needed somewhere else, but he said, "A bunch of women living off the land, worshipping a Goddess and hiding from their families, who love them, wasn't right and we all needed serious help."
My sister said I shouldn't have come back, but when your first born gets too sick to take care of herself and the man who fathered her does everything in his power to make it worse, then her doctor's say, 'we need to get the mother back here.', well, calling or not a mothers' got to do what a mother's got to do. It's more powerful than a vow, this mother thing, it's a thing you agree to because you brought them into the world. You are responsible for them, not because you agreed to it in front of the Almighty, but because your heart makes a promise to care for those things you have helped to create.
So I came back and she got more lucid and much stronger, but by then I was all worn out and even though in five years he never touched me, just in case I'd been with another man, he still pretended he was my husband and he seemed to think he was.
He told me how he couldn't live without me and how I'd taken a vow, 'til death do us part'. He said it everyday for five years. Five times 365, that's more than one thousand eight hundred times and really more because most days he said it more than once.
Even so I don't remember attempting murder. They said my fingerprints were on the poison even though I didn't recognize the bottle and didn't even know we had rats that needed killing. They said it had been building up in his system for a long time, tiny doses for months the doctor said. It didn't matter that I never cooked for him, that I didn't even talk to him or do his laundry. They said I could have put it in the milk or the coffee or the food he fixed for himself. So that was no defense and neither was my not knowing that we even had a bottle of poison in the house because I could be lying about that.
So that's when the free lawyer said I could try for a plea of diminished capacity and go to a hospital instead of jail and that he, (the almost murdered man, that is) really wanted me to do the hospital thing rather than the jail thing. He didn't hold it against me, he said. He knew it wasn't my fault and he just wanted me to get treatment and come home to him.
Funny thing, the jury was impressed by that. I saw the expression on their faces, you know that, 'what a saint of a man, so devoted' look that made my skin crawl. So the man who was prosecuting my case said to him, "That's very forgiving of you, can you tell this court, why after everything that's happened you still want her back?"
Now I thought that was a good question. It made me suspicious and I thought sure the jury would be too, but he just looked right at me and said, "Because she's my wife. I took a vow, 'til death do us part.'
So I came to jail and I've done well here. I miss the sun sometimes and being able to go outside when I want, but at least I've been free and I've been allowed to refuse all his visits and I never read any of his mail.
But now they say this is my very last day here and tomorrow I'll be going home, that my release is right after lunch and that he'll be here to pick me up.
So I asked around and traded all the things he's been sending for my comfort that I had all piled up under my cot, for a bottle of pills. You can get anything in prison, you know. I wouldn't have believed it with all the guards and bars, but it's true.
So now I'm just waiting for the group meeting so I can say good-bye to my friends in here, then I'm going home.
Betsy Foster
© April 2001
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