The shadow, said Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung is the unknown ‘‘dark side’’ of our personality–-dark because it tends to consist predominantly of the primitive, negative, socially or religiously depreciated human emotions and impulses completely obscured from consciousness. Whatever we deem evil, inferior or unacceptable and deny in ourselves becomes part of the shadow.
My cell is dark. I’m a photographer, I like light, it is always the first thing I notice, yet here I am in this hell hole. A mole in a hole, I have become a mole in a hole, or maybe a rat or a bat with little darting eyes. No southern exposure, it could be day or night, no one would know the difference. One window, more like a slit, looks out over a dry field of tumbleweed surrounded by tall fencing and this mishmash of wire netting on top. That’s my view, which I can see only by dragging a chair to the window, climbing up, and looking out.
I grew up on a ranch just outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming, you know where the deer and the antelope play. Seldom is heard a discouraging word doesn’t cut it though because my father was a drunk and a mean one. I stayed as far away from him as I could. I was outside all day long riding horses. Give me a horse any day over a human. Or a dog. You don’t appreciate the great outdoors until you are locked up. Sometimes I feel as if I am choking in here, bars and walls everywhere and the food is awful. When I get out of this shit box I never want to see peanut butter again. Some of the inmates actually like it here, they call it home. A puppet who enjoys her strings still isn’t free. Sad, they don’t even know they are puppets.
When I was in high school I spent a lot of time smoking pot. It was then that I fell in love with my camera. I moved to Chicago after graduation and began photographing everything I saw. Chicago was hard for me, I definitely didn’t bloom where I was planted. After Wyoming the mass confusion of city life left me bewildered and very paranoid. I blame the paranoia on Chicago, of course, all the pot I was smoking had nothing to do with it.
I don’t have a cell mate but since our cells are all lined up like dominoes, one large fart in cell #1 and the dominoes could all come tumbling down. My next door neighbor is a Jew named Sadie. Interesting. Not too many Jews in Cheyenne. Neighbor? Not a good word if it makes you think of Mr. Rogers and his soapy little won’t you be my neighbor crap. Sadie didn’t grow up in Mr. Roger’s neighborhood, she grew up in Brooklyn. Her parents were real strict, she told me they disowned her when she came here. Sadie’s a real piece of work: big hair, big nose, big tush, big heart, no filters but she has this uncanny ability to vent and yet hide at the same time. I can’t explain it but you never know with Sadie, you never know what she will come out with next. She can size up a phony in a New York minute, and she knows everybody. Inmates tell her things because she cuts their hair, and as soon as her scissors start snapping it’s like a confessional. She told me there is something about touching people’s heads that makes them open up. Compared to most of the meshegas (crazy people) in here, she is a positive genius.
Sadie is teaching me Yiddish words. They’re great, it’s like a whole new vocabulary. I write them down in my notebook, it’s my project, something to work on while I do my time. I try to use them, you’ll see. The thing I love about these words is that they are so perfect like for example tush. Or plotz. (to explode) She is always asking the guards to bring her books and talking about God and stuff. If I even for one minute believed in that God she loves, I would have to say that God put Sadie in the cell next to mine. But I don’t.
Before I was incarcerated I was seeing a therapist once a week. Fritz. He was a Jungian. Fritz would have a field day in this place, so many mean girls trapped in a sea of orange, and when I say trapped, I mean trapped - no escape from each other, a real dog eat dog world. Everyone would sooner die than appear to be a mentsh (decent person) because to be nice is to be weak and weakness is a no no. On the outside there is a whole lot of pretending going on, people playing nice. In here you are doomed if you let your guard down, you will loose everything: comb, books, paper, pencils, deodorant, dignity, stolen right out from under your nose. We are a den of thieves. Say what you will about this bunch, we steal well, we are pros. There is something I kind of like about it. We are who we are.
Fritz’ office was dark, too, but at least I had the freedom to come and go back then. Massive Victorian mahogany furniture dominated his office, taking up space like elephants sleeping on Oriental rugs. It was dark but it was kind of comforting. Today my comfort is a two-foot wide cot, a desk, a chair, a sink and a toilet, all flimsy and attached to the floor. I guess they think I might use my chair as a weapon, whack a guard over the head with it. And the toilet? Let’s not even go there because there is no curtain.
The only thing that really mattered to Fritz was that pesky little shadow of mine. All I wanted to do was talk about photography and why I wasn’t selling mine and all he wanted to talk about was my damn shadow. Fritz was obsessed with my shadow which I found ironic, due to the fact that I always look for light. He told me his primary goal was to “integrate my shadow with my persona.” Say what? I had no idea what he was talking about but it would have been a good idea if I had listened up because if I had, I might not find myself living in the hell hole I find myself today.
I always dreaded approaching Fritz’s office. It sucked you in so that it required a certain amount of energy to leave, energy I could never count on. Looking back, (I have so much time these days it seems I do nothing but learn Yiddish words or chew on my cud and “look back”) I should have listened to him more and talked less but when I flopped down on his couch, I never shut up. It’s embarrassing, I was like a wind up doll, a parrot, Polly wants a cracker, chattering on and on. What I had to say must have made about as much sense to Fritz as it would have made to Polly the parrot. I sure could have used some of Sadie’s vocabulary in that office, Fritz would have loved those Yiddish words. Kvetsh (complain), that’s all I did.
It was like that office put some kind of a spell on me, as if I walked into the wrong side of an elaborate tapestry and was caught up in tangles and knots which are the mess I have made of my life. The right side of the tapestry was a Lifetime for Women movie, the projection of my life for the world to see but Fritz always steered the conversation to that tangled mess, the mishegas behind the fabric. Poor man, he always looked tired, he needed to get out more. Fresh air would do him good. A little man, he was also a Catholic priest but he never forced the Jesus stuff down my throat. I think his love affair with Jesus made him kind of spacey, as if he spent most of his time talking to some higher power as he floated through life like a helium balloon. When I was with him he just sat there with his sad brown cow eyes and listened. Sometimes I thought he wanted to jump out of his chair and strangle me, other times I had the feeling he was sinking. Go figure.
I dreaded any long pauses so I just kept flapping my lips. It became a game of cat and mouse, sometimes I was the cat, sometimes the mouse, but being the mouse isn't always a bad thing, it teaches you to scamper. It took me a long time to learn that lesson but it serves me well in here. I don’t say much and I scamper often. Believe me, it wouldn’t matter if I ever said another word, there are enough drama queens in this place to sink The Queen Elizabeth. Oy vey. (Everyone knows what that means!)
I suppose you are wondering why I am here. Or maybe not. I’ll tell you because I have nothing better to do and you can either read on or go do something useful like walking your dog. When all is said and done it’s all gornisht. (nothing, beyond help.) Enough with the Yiddish already? But I can’t stop, it is so descriptive. I love it.
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"I'm not sure I can continue with photography.”
"Why not?”
"I photographed this designer the other day. Young. Smart. Her name is Nikki. She came across all sugary to me, but I could tell she was the kind who would hand you a present all wrapped up pretty in one hand while she was stabbing you in the back with the other, something kind of creepy about her.”
“Maybe you photographed her shadow.”
“Right! Her shadow! I never thought of that.”
“Anyway, she needed publicity shots. I took about 50 pictures. The hair, the makeup, skin tones, the whole package, but it was like photographing a mannequin. Then I caught her off guard, she was removing a shoe because her feet hurt, and the shot was incredible."
"Did you show it to her?" Fritz, loved stuff like this, he always sees peoples’ shadows before he sees the person.
“I did.”
“What did she say?”
“She hated it."
Fritz sipped his omnipresent tea slowly. “Did you like her?”
I had no idea then what a loaded question that was and where the crooked path of our friendship was to lead me. Almost since the day we met we spent the better part of our time together but I never knew Nikki well. Spending a lot of time with someone means little. Just because a person is familiar doesn't necessarily mean you know them. “Did I like her?” I hated her, yet I couldn’t stay away.
The more I told Fritz, the more his shackles rose. “Stay away from her. She sounds like a borderline personality to me and that’s the last thing you need in your life now.”
Borderline personality disorder? WTF? All I knew was that her thick black hair covered her head like a bicycle helmet, so short that when you looked at her the only thing you noticed were her hazel eyes, enormous behind her unflinching stare. I never understood how anyone could project such empathy from her eyes while at the same time her face retained an expression of perpetual annoyance. I am in this joint because of her. She framed me. If I had only listened to Fritz . . .
I had no idea where she grew up, where she went to school. Her parents? Were they living? She rented a furnished room on the top floor of an old colonial house in town, and there was not one thing that revealed her past in that room. The room was scrupulously neat, I felt as if I would disturb a sacred object if I touched anything. She always kept me waiting so I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the only thing on the wall, a print of an intense child by Otto Dix who I found unsettling. The girl stared at me as if she knew everything about me while revealing nothing about herself, a perfect replica of Nikki. The room must have been like an oven in summer, no air conditioner in sight. The window looked out over the rows of cars parked in an Enterprise car rental lot across the street. Whenever I went to see her, I couldn't wait to get out of there.
Nikki was a whiner, a complainer, nothing was ever right with her, but she had this ability to draw people into her circle and then use them for her nefarious purposes. She played me like a fiddle and for some strange reason when she said “jump,” I said, “how high?”
“Lillybelle, I need you to do me a favor.” My name is Lilly, but for some reason she always attached Belle to it.
“What’s that?” I could tell I would not want to do it by the way she hemmed and hawed.
“What?”
“I owe some people money, I need someone to drop off this box, it’s got cash in it.”
“Why don’t you do it yourself?”
“Because I am very late with paying it back, if they see me, they might hurt me.”
“Well, I don’t want any part of it. Find someone else.”
“Please.”
“Is it drug money?” I knew Nikki smoked a lot of pot, I didn’t think she was into the hard stuff.
“No, it’s not drug money, it has nothing to do with drugs.”
“Well I want nothing to do with this, it doesn’t smell right.”
If only I had paid attention to the hair standing up on the back of my neck, I would have run as far away as I could. Johnny Cash is right, you gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run.” Fritz was right. “Stay away from her,” he told me again and again. Jesus, how stupid could I be?
So I drive up to this house, ring the doorbell, and was about to hand this bozo the box full of money when all hell broke loose. Blue flashing lights, bullhorns, a friggen’ SWAT team arrives.
That’s it. End of story. Here I sit and here I shall remain for two long years. I don’t miss men, I certainly don’t miss Nikki, but I do miss my camera. Sometimes I wish I had never seen a camera. I have never known anyone, male or female who has ever given me as much pleasure as my camera, they all pale in comparison. Well, except maybe for Sadie. And Fritz. He even comes to see me from time to time. We kibbitz,(verbal joking) about the klutzs (clumsy people) I have to put up with around this place, every time he comes, it’s a blessing. Mazel Tov. (Good luck)
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