She acts normal when I talk to her. She calls herself “Butterfly”, says this was the name she was given by her fellow prisoners when she first entered the system over thirty years ago. She tells me she was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in the year of 1969; then raised in High Point, North Carolina. Her real name is Jenny, Jenny Guynn. But, as I mentioned, her fellow prisoners call her “Butterfly”. I ask her about her name and her eyes light up. Despite her circumstances, she smiles, and I wonder how she does it. She says, “Butterfly”, and I can tell there’s more to the name than I can possibly imagine.
“Yeah – it’s the name they gave me,” she says, as she sits across from me. “They gave it to me while I was taking a Cognitive Behavior Intervention program in ’95. It’s crazy, eh?”
Butterfly has a history, you see. The history includes being repeatedly raped and sexually abused by a neighbor when she was eight-years-old. This went on until she was ten, she tells me. She says the neighbor’s name was Marsh. Then later on that same year she tells me how her best friend’s brother, Mike, tried to have sex with her one night when she had stayed over at their house.
“It was awful – the pain,” she says. She then looks off to the side of me, staring at the gray wall that seems to be one among many at the prison she has been housed at since 2016.
“I can only imagine,” I tell her. What else can I say?
We are in the visitation room at the Eastern Correctional Facility, a medium-custody prison in eastern North Carolina. It’s Sunday afternoon. It’s our first visit. There are other visitors here also. They, like us, are seated at small black-and-white rounded tables. And, like most Sundays, it’s crowded in here. It’s crowded and noisy. Tables are filled by family or friends and their imprisoned loved ones. If one listens closely enough, they will hear the anguish of being separated, of being alone and watching dreams fade away. That’s the norm in here. It’s part of prison life.
Butterfly’s history also includes being convicted and sentenced to life for committing sex crimes with a minor in 1987. She’s told me all about these crimes – and the horrors of her youth – in her past letters to me. Her first letter arrived about a year ago. It came as part of a voluntary church pen-pal program. Of course, I had reservations about getting involved at first. I’d entered her name and the prison number I’d been given and her profile appeared. It included her criminal history and an outdated photo of her. Aside from the criminal history and initial shock, she looked like any ordinary woman: brown hair, hazel eyes, petite, and fairly good-looking. But I was nevertheless stunned by it all, to be truthful, because none of what I’d seen of or read from her seemed to fit.
Like I said, today is our first meeting. She sits across from me. She’s telling me her story. I sit quietly. This story, I’m sure, she has told countless times before. I see the pain in her eyes as she relates to me her past. I see the shame on her face. Her eyes moisten up.
“It’s okay,” I tell her.
“I’ve learnt from my mistakes,” she goes on. “I’m accountable and responsible now. And I’ve taken several self-help programs within prison. These things have provided me with a lot of tools to help me once I am afforded another chance in society. All I want is another chance, George, a second chance. That’s all.”
“It will come,” I assure her. “Your time is coming. Thirty years is long enough.”
“I don’t know,” she tells me, as she pulls a picture from her pocket and lays it upon the table. I look at it. It’s of a young girl, taken years ago.
“It’s me when I first entered the system years ago,” she says.
“Ah,” I say, taken aback, speechless. I pick the picture up and hold it up close. She looks so innocent in the picture. Her hair is darker, longer. She is standing in front of a white cinder-block wall, a faint smile trying to form across her lips.
“Long time ago, eh?” she says, smiling. I shake my head.
“Indeed,” I say. “I can’t even begin to imagine.”
“Been through a lot over the years,” she says, as she moves strands of hair behind her ear.
“I don’t see how you’ve made it this far,” I tell her frankly.
“It’s all because of God, George, to be honest,” she says. “It’s Him that has enabled me to keep-on like I have.”
“But it doesn’t seem normal,” I tell her, as our visit nears its end. “It just doesn’t seem real, to be quite honest.”
“My life never has been,” she says, as the guard nearby announces: “Visitation is now over! Visitation is now over!”
Looper
I come to bended knee
and turn over one leaf. Then another.
Then another from this Capture
cabbage that presents a rosette look.
Somewhere amongst the pale-green leaves
there’s a hungry pest residing incognito.
I peer down into the center
sanctum of this future mission meal
and recognize the round chameleon
sucker Locked onto its gorgeous stem.
Moving now, it crawls sluggishly-
perhaps drunken by the elixir from this plant’s heart.
Resolute, though, it clings delicately to the new
growth that proposes to become its expected head-
sucking, nibbling, and voraciously determined,
a cabbage looper inches its way
across the middle, working vigorously
to save its life from the inside out.
I wait
Where are you?
Where did you go?
What did I do wrong?
Why did you desert me?
No Comments